EDWARD   EVERETT   HALE. 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 

L^  ^ 

A  Series  of  Papers 
on  Topics  of  To-day 


By 

EDWARD    EVERETT  HALE 

Author  of  "  The  Man  Without  a  Country," 
"  Memories  of  a  Hundred  Years,"  Etc.,  Etc. 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,   MEAD   &  COMPANY 
1903 


Copyright,    1902, 
By  W.  R.  HEARST. 

Copyright,    1903, 
By  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY. 


BURR   PRINTING   HOUSE, 
NEW   YORK. 


Contents 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY v 

NATION  AND  STATE 
AMERICA 

Nation  and   State 3 

Government  by  the  People 7 

Government  by  the  People 10 

What  is  the  American  People?      ....  14 

Bet  on  the  Country 17 

Forests       .        .                20 

Forests        .                27 

We,   the   People :   or,   War  Lords          ...  30 

People  or  Kings?      Taxes 34 

Local    Option 37 

CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

Our  Wealth  in  Common 40 

CO-OPERATION     .        ...        .        .        .        .46 

CO-OPERATION    AGAIN        .        .        .        .        .        .50 

CO-OPERATION    AGAIN        .  •    '.       .        .        .        .52 

Fire    and     Water     .        *        ..       .  .        .60 

His  Majesty  the  People  „       .        .  -  .        .63 

Old-Fashioned    Fuel 65 

Better   and    Better   .        .        ...        .        .68 

The  President's  Arbitration    .        .        .        .        .72 

WOMEN'S  CLUBS 

Mrs.    Stanton 78 

Women's     Clubs       .        ., 82 

What   Do  the   Girls   Need? 85 

Open-Air  Life   for  Women 88 

THE  NEW  CENTURY 

Half  a  Million  Dollars 92 

What   Next? 96 

The  New  Journalism       ..*...  100 

[Hi] 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Space  Writing  .        . 103 

The  City  of  Washington 113 

Sodom  and  Gomorrah 116 

Charity    Corporations 121 

Industrial    Education 127 

Old-Age  Pensions 133 

The  Boston  Forum 137 

The  Larger  World 143 

The   Pan-American  Railway 148 

A  Wider  Programme 153 

Around  Home 158 

ANNIVERSARIES 
HISTORY 

October  Twenty-one — What? 165 

Daniel    Webster 169 

Forefathers'  Day 173 

The  Way  and  How  They  Found  Christmas  .        .  182 

The  New  Year 189 

SUNDAY  AND  SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 
SUNDAY  AND  HOME 

How  Shall  We  Spend  Sunday?      .        .        .        .  IQ5 

The  Ideal  Sunday 201 

Sunday    in    Cities 206 

"Everyman" 212 

Religious     Education 216 

Sunday  and  Monday 220 

The  Chicago  Convention 223 

Right  or  Wrong 228 

Duty — Men   Who    Succeed 231 

THE    FIVE   GREAT    DUTIES    OF   THE 

TWENTIETH  CENTURY 
APPENDIX 

The   Five   Duties      .        .        .        .       .     '  «        .239 

The  Educated  Citizen      .......  259 

Old-Age   Pensions    .        .        .       ,       .       »       .  278 

[iv] 


Introductory 

In  the  autumn  of  1902,  Mr.  Hearst,  of  the 
New  York  American,  asked  me  if  I  would  fur- 
nish three  articles  for  that  paper  in  every  week 
of  the  next  three  months. 

I  was  very  glad  to  have  this  opportunity  for 
addressing  a  great  number  of  people  every  few 
days. 

Mr.  Hearst  is  kind  enough  to  permit  me  to 
collect  these  papers  and  print  them  together.  In 
the  collection,  mixed  in  with  the  other  papers,  I 
have  included  articles  which  I  wrote  at  the  same 
time  and  later  in  the  winter  for  The  Record  of 
Lend  a  Hand,  and  for  the  Christian  Register. 

My  younger  friends  think  that  the  younger 
readers  of  the  new  century  will  not  know  that 
to  us  old  fellows  "leader"  means  a  leading 
article.  But  for  some  doubt  here,  I  should  have 
called  this  collection  "Thirty-Nine  Leaders.*' 
I  find  in  the  Century  Dictionary  that  Mr.  David 
J.  Hill  in  writing  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  says, 
"He  was  the  first  of  our  journalists  to  adopt  the 

[v] 


INTRODUCTORY 


English  practice  of  'leaders,'  which  has  since 
become  the  universal  habit  of  our  journalism." 
And  the  Century  gives  in  its  sixth  heading  this 
statement:  Leader,  that  which  precedes  .  .  . 
the  principal  editorial  article  in  a  newspaper; 
one  of  the  longer  articles  in  a  newspaper  appear- 
ing as  its  own  utterance  or  expression  of  edito- 
rial views,  whether  written  by  the  ostensible 
editor  or  by  leader-writers  or  contributors." 

In  New  England  we  do  not  regard  Mr.  Bry- 
ant as  introducing  the  English  custom  in  Amer- 
ica. Old  men  have  told  me,  and  I  believe,  that 
my  father,  Mr.  Nathan  Hale,  introduced  it  in 
the  Weekly  Messenger  as  early  as  1810.  For 
the  American  newspaper  of  either  of  the  cities 
had  been  made  up  till  that  time  by  contributors 
who  signed  some  name,  fictitious  or  real,  or  by 
the  paragraphs  of  news  which  were  collected 
from  shipmasters,  travellers,  or  others.  But  in 
England  the  custom  and  the  word  were  much 
older.  DeFoe  wrote  "leaders."  Lestrange 
wrote  "leaders."  What  we  call  the  Tattler, 
the  Spectator,  the  Idler,  or  the  rest  was  a  col- 
lection of  "leaders"  which  Addison,  Steele,  and 
such  men  wrote  for  those  journals. 

The  Oxford  Dictionary  quotes  no  earlier  use 
of  the  word  than  Disraeli  in  "Coningsby"  in 
1844.  "Give  me  a  man  who  can  write  a  leader." 
[vi] 


INTRODUCTORY 


They  cite  from  Matthews's  "Americanisms," 
1892,  "The  American  calls  that  an  editorial 
which  an  Englishman  calls  a  leader."  But  I  am 
quite  sure  that  as  early  as  1840  the  word  was 
perfectly  well  known  in  American  journalism. 
The  foreman  of  the  printing  office  would  him- 
self come  down  into  the  editorial  room,  and  say 
to  whoever  was  in  charge,  "What  shall  we  lead 
with?"  By  which  he  meant,  "which  of  the  edi- 
torial articles  shall  be  the  leader?" 

Of  course  in  a  book  made  up  as  this  is,  some 
suggestions  will  be  repeated  again  and  again; 
no  harm,  according  to  me,  if  it  is  repeated  thirty- 
nine  times.  It  would  be  ridiculous  to  try  to 
digest  these  chapters  into  one  treatise.  That  is 
precisely  what  they  are  not. 

In  the  second  part  of  the  book  will  be  found 
some  longer  papers  which  discuss  the  same  sub- 
jects with  further  illustration. 

I  have  made  no  attempt  in  editing  these 
papers,  long  or  short,  to  strike  out  sentences  or 
paragraphs  which  repeat  in  one  what  has  been 
said  in  another.  In  such  a  collection  repetition 
is  a  matter  of  course.  The  leading  article  is  the 
expression  of  the  thought  of  the  day  as  to  the 
necessities  of  the  day.  There  is  a  very  fair  ques- 
tion, which  I  understand  as  well  as  this  reader 
does,  whether  there  is  any  need  of  reproducing 

[vii] 


INTRODUCTORY 


it  all.     But  if  it  is  to  be  reproduced,  it  must  be 
"in  its  entirety." 


This  is  as  good  a  place  as  any  to  tell  for  the 
last  time  one  of  the  office  stories  of  1848.  Its 
merit  is  that  it  is  true. 

In  February,  1848,  the  Journal  des  Debats 
was  the  Government  paper.  It  had  stood 
bravely  by  Guizot,  whom  the  radical  opposition 
called  the  Valpoule  of  the  Government,  meaning 
Walpole,  which  I  suppose  he  was.  The  Pari- 
sian Revolution  took  place,  which  Guizot 
had  brought  on  his  head.  The  King  had  run 
away,  Guizot  had  run  away,  everybody  who 
could  run  away  had  done  so.  The  miracle  was 
that  the  office  of  the  Journal  des  Debats  was 
standing.  The  mob  hated  the  Journal  and 
could  naturally  have  broken  the  windows  first 
and  set  fire  to  the  office  next.  But  there  was  no 
such  good  excuse.  The  editors  had  not  run 
away,  or  at  least  some  of  them  remained.  And 
the  paper  must  appear  the  next  morning. 

Of  course  there  must  be  a  leader.  And  the 
leader  must  be  about  something,  or  pretend  to 
be.  What  should  this  something  be?  Not 
royalty,  oh,  no!  Not  Democracy,  oh,  no!  Not 
Socialism,  oh,  no !  Not  anything  which  the  last 
fortnight  had  discovered,  oh,  no!  All  these 
[  viii  ] 


INTRODUCTORY 


were  dangerous.  But  there  must  be  something  1 
"We  cannot  lead  with  a  blank  half  column  as 
they  do  in  St.  Petersburg!"  No!  But  the 
gentleman  on  duty  was  equal  to  the  occasion. 
There  is  one  central  subject  which  may  be  dis- 
cussed in  any  ill-fitting  dinner  party,  and  the 
excellent  editor  wrote  his  column  and  sent  it  to 
the  frightened  foreman.  The  Journal  appeared 
on  the  first  morning  of  the  New  Born  Republic. 
The  leader  was  an  article  on  "The  Independ- 
ence of  the  Judiciary." 

In  my  younger  days,  as  young  editors  parted 
at  midnight  for  the  last  hour's  work,  the  stand- 
ing joke  was, 

"What  shall  you  lead  with,  Charles?" 

"Oh,  we  will  lead  with  the  Independence  of 
the  Judiciary." 

In  this  volume  we  lead  with  AMERICA. 


[ix] 


NATION  AND    STATE 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE 


America 


NATION  AND  STATE. 

THE  great  difficulty  of  the  American 
people  in  the  American  Revolution 
was  their  need  of  a  National  Govern- 
ment. 

In  truth,  men  hardly  knew  what  the  word 
"nation"  meant.  On  the  other  side  of  the 
ocean  very  few  people  know  now  what  it  means. 
The  great  victory  of  the  American  Constitu- 
tion was  that  for  us  it  defined  the  word  "nation." 
The  "States"  were  to  be  independent  for  all  local 
purposes;  they  were  united  and  are  one  for  all 
"National"  purposes. 

So  the  National  Constitution  defined  the 
duties  of  our  National  Government.  There  are 
six  important  ones : 

i.  The  care  of  intercourse  with  foreign 
nations.  And  now  no  State  and  no  man  can 

[3] 


'WE,   THE  PEOPLE" 


carry    on    private    negotiations   on    matters   of 
state  with  England  or  Russia. 

2.  The  relations  with  Indian  tribes. 

3.  Regulation  of  commerce  among  the  States. 

4.  A  part  of  this,  if  you  please,  the  Post 
Office  and  the  coinage  of  money. 

5.  Justice  between  every  American  and  every 
other.     A  Georgian  is  as  good  as  a  man  in  the 
Bowery  if  he  behaves  as  well. 

6.  And  this  was  intentionally  left  indefinite — 
"the  common  defence  and  the  general  welfare." 

This  accurate  distinction  between  the  duties 
of  the  nation  and  the  duties  of  the  local  govern- 
ment gives  their  glory  to  the  men  who  made  the 
Constitution.  Mr.  Gladstone  said  of  them,  and 
he  is  right,  that  they  struck  off  in  a  few  days  the 
most  important  piece  of  work  which  was  ever 
done  in  that  time  in  that  line.  And  this  is  true. 

But  besides  Mr.  James  Bryce,  nobody  of  any 
importance  in  the  British  Empire  seems  to  under- 
stand it.  If  a  thousand  men  in  the  British  Em- 
pire understood  it,  there  would  be  no  quarrel 
between  the  English  Government  and  Ireland. 
I  sat  in  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons 
once  for  half  an  hour  to  hear  a  discussion 
whether  the  British  Empire,  Empress-Queen, 
Privy  Council,  Bishop,  Lords  and  Commons  in 
Parliament  meant  to  pay  a  pension  to  an  Irish 

[4] 


AMERICA 


school-mistress  on  whose  head  a  blackboard  had 
fallen.  That  is,  the  nation  was  asked  to  inter- 
fere in  a  local  affair.  So  is  it  that  an  eminent 
European  publicist  wrote  last  week  to  the  Amer- 
ican Journal,  talking  about  the  right  of  Eminent 
Domain,  while  he  does  not  know  more  than  a 
baby  whose  the  eminent  domain  is.  Mr.  Bryce 
says  that  a  Swiss  schoolmaster  knows  about  the 
distinction  of  State  and  Nation.  But  I  never 
saw  his  book. 

For  the  first  half  century,  public  parties 
formed  themselves  here  on  questions  regarding 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  National  Gov- 
ernment and  the  State  Government.  But  we 
have  got  well  beyond  that  now.  We  found  out 
in  the  Civil  War  that  this  was  a  Nation  and  not 
a  Confederation.  We  found  out  that  the  State 
of  Massachusetts  must  fly  the  United  States  flag 
on  the  State  House  in  Boston.  We  have  found 
that  the  rule  of  God  requires  that  the  United 
States  mail  shall  be  carried  through  the  State 
of  Illinois  without  the  detention  of  one-thou- 
sandth part  of  a  second.  And,  at  the  same  time, 
we  know  that  the  National  Government  leaves 
to  the  forty-five  States  the  local  government  to 
settle  their  own  affairs  as  they  choose.  Mr. 
Harris,  the  Superintendent  of  Education,  must 
not  tell  the  State  of  Massachusetts  what  spelling 

[5] 


',   THE  PEOPLE" 


book  shall  be  studied  in  Cranberry  Centre.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  when  the  matter  relates  to 
any  of  the  six  Constitutional  articles,  or  to  the 
general  welfare,  the  general  Government  must 
take  hold — must,  because  this  is  a  Government 
of  Laws  and  not  of  Men.  For  instance,  in  the 
State  of  Maine,  a  man  may  not  legally  buy  liquor 
at  an  open  bar.  In  the  State  of  New  York  he 
can.  But  if  the  man  in  New  York  chooses  to 
put  his  drink  into  a  vial  and  send  it  by  express 
to  the  man  in  Maine,  the  man  in  Maine  may 
open  the  bottle  and  drink  it  in  the  presence  of 
the  Supreme  Court  and  all  the  magistrates  of 
the  State;  because  the  State  of  Maine  cannot 
interfere  with  the  regulation  of  commerce  be- 
tween the  States. 

True  statesmanship  in  America  cultivates  a 
passionate  loyalty  to  the  nation;  because  the 
nation  has  the  charge  of  national  affairs,  and  at 
the  same  time  passionate  loyalty  to  the  State 
where  the  State  is  engaged  in  its  local  affairs. 
The  fine  distinction  drawn  between  the  two  in  the 
Constitution  has  made  the  nation  the  America 
that  it  is. 


[6] 


AMERICA 


GOVERNMENT  BY  THE  PEOPLE. 

THERE  is  a  curious  balancing  of  opinion 
and  belief  about  government  by  the 
people.  The  scale  which  is  up  to-day 
is  down  to-morrow. 

Mr.  Wiseman,  for  instance,  is  quite  clear  that 
some  measure  shall  be  carried  through.  He 
wishes,  perhaps,  that  the  open  season  for  par- 
tridge shooting  shall  begin  a  fortnight  later  or 
a  fortnight  earlier.  He  writes  a  nice  article 
about  it,  and  sends  it  to  the  Extinguisher.  The 
editor  does  not  read  it,  for  the  ink  is  too  pale; 
but  he  prints  it.  But  only  three  people  read 
beyond  the  seventh  line.  The  legislature  meets, 
and  the  governor  does  not  even  refer  to  Mr. 
Wiseman's  wishes  in  his  message  or  speech.  Mr. 
Wiseman  is  indignant.  He  retires  to  Paris  for 
a  year  to  spend  his  dividends  or  to  reinvest  them. 
He  is  much  pleased  with  the  cleanness  of  the 
sidewalks  in  Paris.  He  asks  the  Count  of 
Monte  Cristo  to  dinner.  And,  as  they  chat 
"over  theirwalnuts,"he  tells  the  Count  that  there 
is  no  government  by  the  people  in  America,  that 
the  streets  are  very  dirty  there,  and  that  no  gen- 
tleman can  live  there. 

At  the  same  moment  his  friend  and  classmate, 
Mr.  Horace  Holworthy,  is  riding  up  from  the 

[7] 


,   THE  PEOPLE* 


gare  in  Paris  to  his  hotel.  One  of  the  French 
gentlemen  of  the  quarter  is  not  pleased  with  his 
appearance,  and  throws  a  ruta-baga,  weighing 
three  or  four  pounds,  at  his  head.  It  is  well 
aimed,  and,  for  a  minute,  Mr.  Holworthy  is  not 
able  to  converse.  When  he  does  converse,  he 
says  that  he  does  not  find  the  streets  of  Paris 
more  agreeable  than  those  of  Boston. 

People  who  write  for  the  press,  especially — 
say  people  like  me — are  signally  apt  to  take  in 
this  way  some  special  grievance  or  some  special 
triumph  for  a  text,  and  on  this  text  to  work  out 
a  conclusion, "that  which  must  be  demonstrated," 
the  Q.  E.  D.  of  the  logicians,  as  to  the  great 
question  whether  the  people  does  govern  or  does 
not. 

Mr.  James  has  cited  a  fine  story  of  Carlyle, 
which  applies  here.  Dear  Margaret  Fuller  had 
perhaps  taken  herself  the  least  bit  too  seriously. 
She  had  said  that  she  had  determined  "to  accept 
the  universe." 

"Gad!  she  had  better!"  said  Carlyle. 

Our  practical  friend  from  Ecclefechan  had 
himself  tried  some  experiments  in  that  direction. 

Now  if,  in  his  college  days,  Mr.  Wiseman  had 
looked  in  at  the  East  Cambridge  prison  once  or 
twice,  had  once  or  twice  walked  through  the 
Riverside  printing-office,  had  learned  the  meth- 

[8] 


AMERICA 


ods  of  the  Prospect  Union,  had  perhaps  taken 
a  subdivision  in  the  Associated  Charities,  he 
might  have  learned  two  things.  First,  he  might 
have  known,  what  he  does  not  know,  what  sort 
of  persons  make  up  the  American  people.  Sec- 
ond, he  would  have  learned  how  little  the  doc- 
trinaires, people  like  himself,  affect  the  average 
intelligence  of  the  American  people;  and  he 
would  know  why  the  doctrinaires  are  of  so  little 
use  as  they  are. 

Freeman  Clarke  once  said  of  a  great  peace 
congress :  "The  effect  of  such  meetings  is  often 
exaggerated.  To  bring  together  those  who  hold 
certain  opinions  does  not  necessarily  increase 
their  number.  .  .  .  The  members  mistake  the 
sentiment  of  the  meetings  for  public  opinion." 

This  wise  statement  of  a  wise  man  precisely 
fits  the  case  of  the  critical  and  exclusive  Mr. 
Wiseman.  He  meets  at  his  club,  or  union,  a 
certain  set  of  men  he  knows;  and  they  all  agree, 
perhaps,  that  gray  is  a  mixture  of  black  and 
white,  and  that  they  should  be  mixed  in  the  pro- 
portion of  43  to  57.  Every  time  they  meet, 
they  talk  of  the  shade  of  gray,  so  they  think 
everybody  else  is  talking  about  it.  They  see 
nobody  else,  and  they  are  angry  that  no  one  does 
anything  about  it.  They  perhaps  write  books 
about  it  which  nobody  reads. 

[9] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Meanwhile  the  People  does  not  know  that 
there  are  any  such  people  as  Mr.  Wiseman  in 
the  world.  It  never  heard  of  the  club,  and  does 
not  know  that  there  is  any  question  about  "gray." 
The  people  goes  about  its  business — in  a  rough 
sort  of  way,  in  a  way  which  could  be  improved 
upon.  But  its  improvement  does  not  come  from 
the  Girondists,  or  the  doctrinaires,  or  the  exiles 
in  Paris.  It  comes  from  the  Abraham  Lincolns, 
the  Booker  Washingtons,  the  John  Workmans, 
and  the  Nathan  Spinners.  The  men  of  the  peo- 
ple, who  know  the  people,  have  to  trust  the  peo- 
ple, to  commit  power  to  the  people. 

It  was  the  People  of  America  who  settled  the 
Mississippi  Valley  in  opposition  to  all  the  Wise- 
mans of  their  time. 

It  was  the  People  of  America  who  made  the 
Constitution  of  America. 

It  was  the  People  of  America  who  abolished 
American  slavery. 

GOVERNMENT  BY  THE  PEOPLE. 

YOU  cannot  make  an  European  writer 
understand  what  government  by  the 
People  is.      It  takes  ten  years  for  a 
man  who  has  come  over  from  Europe 
to  America  to  understand  it.     They  all  think 
generally  that  if  the  people  turn  out  and  choose 
[10] 


AMERICA 


a  king,  and  he  does  exactly  what  a  king  would 
have  done  in  Wurtemberg  or  Bavaria,  you  have 
government  by  the  People.  In  precisely  this 
way  Napoleon  III.  persuaded  or  compelled  the 
people  of  France  to  vote  that  he  should  be 
emperor,  and  then  he  was  emperor.  He  was  as 
much  an  autocrat  as  the  Emperor  of  Russia  is, 
and  yet  that  is  called  "government  by  the  Peo- 
ple." At  the  present  moment  the  French  Re- 
public is  called  a  republic.  If  you  choose  to 
name  it  so,  you  can  name  it  so;  but  the  French 
people  do  not  know  what  government  by  the 
People  means. 

You  have  Government  by  the  People  when  the 
people  of  North  Norumbega  get  together  and 
vote  that  the  bridge  over  Otter  Creek  shall  be 
moved  twenty-five  rods  and  rebuilt  there.  When 
they  appoint  a  committee  to  see  to  this,  there 
is  government  by  the  People.  When  the  people 
of  Greater  New  York  vote  as  to  this  system  of 
license  or  that,  or  another,  there  will  be  govern- 
ment by  the  People.  When  the  National  Acad- 
emy of  Fine  Arts  votes  to  give  a  medal  to  Mr. 
Sargent  or  Mr.  Chase,  there  is  government  by 
the  People.  When  the  Second  Church  of  the 
Secession  in  Stand-Still  Corner  votes  to  shingle 
the  meeting-house,  there  is  government  by  the 
People. 


,  THE  PEOPLE' 


On  the  other  hand,  when  the  Department  of 
Roads  and  Bridges  in  Paris  sends  down  M. 
Champernoon  from  Paris  to  select  the  place  for 
a  bridge  at  Fontleroy,  that  is  not  government  by 
the  People,  even  if  the  people  choose  the  presi- 
dent who  appoints  the  Minister  of  Bridges,  who 
appoints  the  engineer  to  build  the  bridge. 

Now  it  is  worth  while  to  remember  this  dis- 
tinction, because  the  rule  which  America  has  over 
the  world  and  is  going  to  have  more  and  more, 
results  from  the  habit  here  of  government  by  the 
People. 

The  Parliament  of  England  comes  together 
•when  King  Edward  VII.  bids  it  come  together. 
It  acts  as  a  body  of  his  loyal  subjects  whom  he 
has  called  together  to  advise  him.  The  Assem- 
bly of  New  York,  on  the  other  hand,  comes 
together  because  the  People  of  New  York  in- 
structs it  to  come  together.  In  that  Assembly 
any  man  can  be  a  member  who  has  obtained  so 
far  the  confidence  of  the  people  round  him  that 
they  like  to  send  him  there.  The  people  of  New 
York  have  said  that  members  of  the  Assembly 
must  be  so  many  years  old,  but  with  that  excep- 
tion the  only  condition  for  his  membership  is 
that  the  neighbors  think  he  is  a  man  of  sense 
enough  to  assist  in  making  the  laws. 

What  happens  from  this  is  that  the  prime 
[12] 


AMERICA 


advances  in  the  legislation  of  the  world  are  made 
from  the  suggestions  of  men  who  are  sent  by 
their  neighbors  to  such  legislative  assemblies. 
Albert  Paine  of  Bangor,  a  man  still  living  and 
active,  took  it  into  his  head  that  persons  indicted 
for  offences  had  a  right  to  tell  their  own  story 
in  court  if  they  wanted  to.  He  went  to  the 
legislature  of  Maine,  and  said  so  in  the  legis- 
lature of  Maine.  The  legislature  hesitated, 
because  the  law  of  England  and  America  did  not 
permit  a  person  to  testify.  But  Paine  saw  the 
sense  of  it,  and  the  legislature  gave  way  and 
passed  an  act  by  which  if  a  person  wish  to  tell 
his  story,  he  might  tell  it.  The  good  sense  and 
humanity  of  the  act  proved  itself  in  Maine,  it 
was  copied  by  State  after  State  in  America.  It 
worked  well  where  it  was  tried;  it  gained  more 
and  more  approval  every  day,  and  now  it  has 
been  copied  here  and  in  England  and  in  Aus- 
tralia, and  this  is  now  the  law  of  the  more  im- 
portant part  of  the  civilized  world.  That  sort 
of  thing  happens  all  the  time,  when  the  people 
are  permitted  to  send  men  of  the  people  into  an 
assembly  of  the  people.  Judge  Hoar  used  to  re- 
mind us  that  ever  since  the  days  of  the  Fathers 
the  Public  Proclamation  has  been,  "Whereas, 
.  .  .  JOHN  HANCOCK  [or  any  other]  has  been 
chosen  GOVERNOR,  the  people  of  the  Common- 
wealth may  GOVERN  THEMSELVES  accordingly." 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


WHAT  IS  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE? 

THE  American  People  is  the  sovereign  of 
America.     We   cannot   say   this   too 
often.     It  is  as  well  that  people  of 
other  countries  should  begin  to  under- 
stand it. 

Governors,  Presidents,  Secretaries  of  State, 
editors  of  newspapers,  are  not  the  persons  who 
rule  the  country.  The  American  People  rules 
the  country,  and  all  these  personages  are  the 
officers  of  the  American  people. 

I  am  saying  this  all  the  time  in  the  pulpit, 
from  the  platform,  in  conversation  and  in  print. 
I  say  it  in  any  way,  because  I  think  it  is  very 
necessary  that  the  servants  of  the  people  shall 
not  take  on  airs  and  think  they  are  the  barons 
or  squires  or  knights  of  the  shire.  People  who 
come  from  other  countries  and  write  about  our 
affairs  are  apt  to  make  mistakes.  Every  one  in 
Europe  makes  the  mistake,  excepting  the  Swiss 
schoolmaster  of  whom  I  have  written  in  this  col- 
umn before.  Whoever  says  this,  however,  is  apt 
to  run  against  some  fool  like  the  mock  soldier 
who  made  Hotspur  so  mad,  the  man  who,  if  it 
had  not  been  for  gunpowder,  would  like  to  have 
been  a  soldier  himself.  Somebody  who  wrote 
an  article  for  a  newspaper  about  the  way  in  which 


AMERICA 


he  wanted  to  govern  America,  and  then  was 
disappointed  because  seven  million  people  did 
not  agree  with  him,  turns  around  and  says  that 
the  people  have  no  will  in  the  matter,  that  they 
are  led  by  some  tricky  designer,  and  that  they  no 
more  govern  America  than  the  flag  of  the  ship 
governs  the  master  who  takes  it  to  port.  It  is, 
however,  just  such  people  as  he  who  do  the  snif- 
fling, the  snuffing,  and  the  snorting  which  make 
republics  very  disagreeable  to  the  looker-on 
from  the  outside. 

The  truth  remains  that  the  people  of  America 
govern  America.  It  is  quite  worth  while  before 
we  put  too  much  trust  either  in  critics  on  the  other 
side  of  the  ocean  or  any  heartsick  critics  at  home, 
that  we  open  our  eyes  and  ears  and  find  out  what 
the  American  people  is. 

In  the  first  place,  the  American  people  is  made 
up  in  a  very  large  proportion  of  men  and  women 
who  can  read  and  write,  who  know  enough 
for  the  formation  of  an  intelligent  opinion,  and 
who  mean  on  the  whole  to  do  what  is  right.  All 
Shakespeare's  sneers  at  the  groundlings,  at  the 
rabble,  and  the  mob  were  true  enough  when  he 
described  people  of  Rome  in  Julius  Caesar's 
time.  They  are  not  true  of  the  American  peo- 
ple now.  Four  per  cent  of  the  people  of  the 
State  of  New  York  are  people  who  can  bring 

[is] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


only  their  muscle  and  their  weight  to  their  daily 
work.  These  are  the  people  who  dig  the  drains, 
the  sewers,  who  "lay  the  stun  wall,"  as  Yankees 
say,  who  carry  buckets  of  coal  up  five  stories  or 
ten.  The  other  ninety-six  per  cent  of  the  work- 
men of  New  York  are  persons  who  work  with 
their  brains,  such  men  as  an  expressman,  who 
keeps  a  delicate  account  of  three  hundred  and 
fifty  customers  in  the  course  of  a  day  and  in  the 
course  of  a  year  does  not  make  ten  mistakes. 
That  man  is  as  fit  to  read  his  newspaper  and  to 
make  a  judgment  between  Judas  Iscariot,  if  he 
is  a  candidate,  and  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  if  he  is 
a  candidate,  as  is  any  intelligent  reader  of  these 
lines. 

It  was  the  American  people  who  colonized 
the  West;  it  was  the  American  people  who  de- 
veloped our  world-wide  commerce;  it  was  the 
American  people  who  contrived  to  carry  through 
the  system  of  internal  improvements;  it  was  the 
American  people  who  freed  the  slaves.  You 
cannot  ascribe  one  of  these  triumphs  to  any 
Charlemagne  or  any  Augustus  Caesar.  They 
illustrate  the  government  by  the  people. 


[16] 


AMERICA 


BET  ON  THE  COUNTRY. 

OH,  it  was  years  ago.     Purkett  was  alive, 
the  great  banker.     We  were  all  sit- 
ting at  the  club,  some  smoking,  some 
gaping,  and  all  talking  or  listening, 
when  Questionmark  said  to  Purkett,  "Purkett, 
you   never   make   a   mistake.     You   are   never 
cleaned  out  like  us  poor  lambs.     Tell  us  the 
secret.     How  do  you  do  it?" 

Purkett  never  smoked,  so  he  did  not  have  to 
take  his  cigar  from  his  mouth.  He  only 
laughed  and  said,  "My  secret?" 

"Yes,  of  course,"  the  other  men  said.  But  if 
it  was  his  secret  it  was  the  club's  secret.  What 
was  our  motto?  We  had  taken  it  from  "The 
Three  Musketeers."  "All  for  each,  each  for  all." 
The  club  was  entitled  to  the  secret  and  would 
have  it,  if  Purkett  meant  to  be  treasurer  of  the 
club  after  this  next  election. 

Purkett  did  not  seem  to  me  to  care  much  for 
the  office  of  treasurer.  But  he  laughed  again 
and  said  he  would  just  as  lief  as  not  tell  us  the 
secret.  He  made  us  take  out  our  pencils  and 
our  note-books,  to  be  sure  we  got  it  right,  and 
when  he  had  made  a  lot  of  fun  with  this,  he 
said,  "All  ready,  go!  This  is  the  secret:  'Bet 
on  the  country.' ' 

[17] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


I  knew  Purkett  very  well,  and  Purkett  always 
succeeded.  But  this  was  the  only  rule  I  ever 
heard  him  lay  down  about  investments. 

It  is  a  right  good  rule  for  an  American  in 
everything.  He  must  "bet  on  the  country." 
First  in  mere  outside  matters,  coal,  oil,  wood, 
salt,  iron,  and  the  other  things.  A  country 
where  iron  lies  loose  on  the  ground,  all  the  way 
from  Alabama  to  Lake  Superior,  will  be  rather 
apt  in  the  long  run  to  get  the  better  in  the  matter 
of  iron  of  countries  where  you  have  to  dig  a 
kilometre  into  the  ground  and  dig  out  the  ore 
with  pickaxes  and  dynamite.  So  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  bet  on  a  country  where  a  farmer  in 
Illinois  can  dig  his  coal  out  of  the  side  of  a  road- 
way on  his  farm  and  carry  it  home  in  his  wheel- 
barrow. In  that  country  you  do  not  pay  fifteen 
dollars  a  ton  for  coal  many  weeks  together. 

But  this  was  not  Purkett's  first  reason  for  bet- 
ting on  the  country.  He  bet  on  the  country,  be- 
cause in  the  long  run  the  right  man  has  so  good 
a  chance  to  do  the  thing  you  want  done.  A  man 
like  Edison  makes  your  electricity  for  you  and 
handles  it.  A  man  like  Roebling  builds  your 
bridge  for  you.  A  man  like  Abraham  Lincoln 
runs  the  whole  machine  for  you.  And  you  do 
not  have  to  inquire  whether  his  grandfather's 
great-grandfather  did  or  did  not  fight  at  this  or 
[18] 


AMERICA 


that  battle  of  Armageddon,  or  whether  his 
grandmother's  great-grandmother  was  or  was 
not  a  favorite  of  King  Egbert  the  Eleventh.  It 
is  as  well  to  bet  on  the  country  of  which  one  of 
the  mottoes  is, 

"Get  the  Best." 

And  there  is  Sam  Patch's  motto,  which  be- 
longs to  the  nation :  "Some  things  can  be  done  as 
well  as  others."  I  would  not  bet  on  a  country 
where  they  kept  the  Custom  House  business 
blanks,  or  the  Law  Courts,  or  the  Assembly 
Houses,  in  the  language  of  1701,  because  nobody 
had  dared  to  change  a  word  in  the  form.  I 
want  to  bet  on  a  country  where  if  a  man  invents 
a  telephone  to-day,  the  man  in  the  government 
office  will  use  it  to-morrow,  if  it  be  the  best  thing 
to  use.  You  bet  on  a  country  where  the  "ins" 
like  to  stay  in,  and  where  they  cannot  stay  in 
long  till  they  learn  how  to  "get  there,"  how  to 
"get  the  best,"  and  that  "some  things  can  be 
done  as  well  as  others." 

But  all  this  means  that  you  and  I  keep  up  the 
standard  to  the  very  best  mark.  We  must  see 
that  the  country  has  good  water,  good  air,  good 
wood,  good  coal,  good  newspapers,  good  books, 
good  women,  and  good  men.  And  this  we  shall 
not  have  unless  you  and  I  take  hold. 

[19] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


FORESTS. 

THE  protection  of  forests,  not  to  say  the 
creation  of   forests,   begins  to  assert 
itself  among  the  national  duties  of  the 
United  States.     It   is   interesting,    in- 
deed, to  see  that  the  Nation  is  thus  resuming  a 
duty  which  it  took  almost  of  course  in  the  be- 
ginning, but  which  has  been  gradually  lost  sight 
of  as  time  went  on. 

Even  in  the  days  of  "strict  construction," 
when  men  who  called  themselves  statesmen  could 
not  spend  money  on  the  National  Road,  there 
was  no  scruple  whatever  about  providing  and 
maintaining  forests.  The  earlier  reports  of  the 
Secretaries  of  the  Navy  went  into  detail  every 
year  as  to  our  live-oak  forests  at  the  South. 
Perhaps  some  spirited  youngster  in  the  Navy 
Department  may  like  to  see  what  has  become  of 
them. 

It  was  not  until  wood  was  no  longer  needed 
for  shipbuilding  that  the  national  care  of  forests 
disappeared  from  the  annual  reports  of  the 
Navy  Department.  And  what  may  be  called 
the  inborn  hatred  of  a  tree  has  always  asserted 
itself  in  the  national  life.  They  say  at  Andover 
that  half  a  century  ago  one  of  their  young  stu- 
dents thought  to  ingratiate  himself  with  his  new 
[20] 


AMERICA 

teachers  by  going  out  with  his  axe  at  daybreak 
and  cutting  down  two  of  the  beautiful  trees  in 
their  great  avenue,  before  anybody  was  awake. 
The  story  illustrates  what  we  may  call  that  sort 
of  inborn  hatred  of  a  tree  in  which  traces  linger 
in  the  blood  of  a  nation  where  men  are  not  many 
generations  off  from  pioneers.  It  is  like  the 
inborn  hatred  of  a  snake,  which  lingers  still 
among  some  of  the  daughters  of  Eve. 

But  the  time  has  come  for  the  Nation  to  assert 
again,  not  simply  its  right  to  take  care  of  forests, 
but  the  duty  of  maintaining  them.  The  duty 
springs  from  the  necessity.  For  if  the  nation, 
as  a  nation,  does  not  take  care  of  its  forests,  no 
one  will.  In  the  management  of  most  property, 
there  is  a  certain  class  of  people  who  are  called 
capitalists,  because  they  wish  to  preserve  the 
property  for  its  uses.  But,  with  regard  to  for- 
ests, no  such  private  interest  shows  itself.  If  a 
man  owns  a  ship,  he  wants  to  keep  it  in  good  con- 
dition as  long  as  he  can.  And  some  ships  have 
lasted  a  hundred  years.  But  if  the  same  man 
buys  a  forest,  he  cuts  it  down,  perhaps  in  the  first 
year.  That  is,  he  makes  money  by  its  destruc- 
tion and  not  by  its  use.  Why  is  there  this  dif- 
ference ? 

It  springs  from  a  certain  natural  indifference 
or  doubt  which  men  have  about  a  distant  future. 

[21] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


I  can  go  among  business  men  with  a  new  inven- 
tion, or  a  new  discovery,  which  will  be  profitable 
say  two  or  three  years  hence — in  1904  or  1905  ; 
and  I  can  find  men  who  will  take  stock  in  my 
plan  or  patent.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
explain  that  the  value  of  the  invention  cannot  be 
developed  until  1910,  everybody  will  laugh  at 
me.  Nobody  will  take  one  share  in  my  com- 
pany. This  is  so  entirely  understood  that  old 
business  men  will  tell  you  squarely  that  they 
never  look  forward  more  than  six  years. 

This,  in  few  words,  is  the  reason  why  in  all 
civilized  communities  the  preservation  of  forests 
eventually  falls  into  the  hands  of  the  govern- 
ment, of  the  people  collectively,  if  the  forests 
are  preserved  at  all.  The  states  of  the  conti- 
nent of  Europe  derive  large  revenues  from  the 
public  ownership  of  forests.  The  state,  as  a 
state,  does  not  die.  The  State,  as  a  state,  there- 
fore, can  look  forward  more  than  six  years.  The 
State,  as  a  state,  can  take  care  of  this  generation 
and  the  next  and  the  next.  So,  Frederick  the 
Great,  a  hundred  years  ago,  took  such  care  of 
the  Prussian  forests  that  the  taxes  are  lighter 
on  the  people  of  Prussia  to-day.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  State  of  Massachusetts  a  hundred 
years  ago  left  its  forests  to  the  greed  of  individ- 
uals. The  annual  product  of  those  forests  is 
[22] 


AMERICA 


probably  not  now  worth  so  much  as  it  was  then. 
And  thus  the  State  of  Massachusetts  to-day  is 
hesitating  whether  it  will  buy  a  few  acres  on  the 
top  of  Mt.  Tom,  while  the  Kingdom  of  Prussia 
to-day  collects  millions  of  dollars  from  the  prod- 
ucts of  its  forests. 

The  State  does  not  die.  Individuals  do;  but 
the  State  means  to  be  eternal.  It  is,  therefore, 
to  the  advantage  of  the  state  to  invest  in  forests, 
while  no  individual  man  pares  to  bet  even  on  his 
own  life,  if  the  bet  looks  forward  more  than  six 
or  eight  years.  It  is  only  occasionally  that  there 
is  an  exception. 

When  Watson,  known  to  old-fashioned  theo- 
logians as  the  Watson  of  "The  Apology,"  was 
made  Bishop,  he  was  very  angry  with  Charles 
Fox  because  he  gave  him  what  Watson  would 
have  called  the  poorest  see  in  England.  It  was, 
alas,  the  only  bishopric  Fox  could  give  him. 
But  Watson  was  that  sort  of  man  that  he  was 
always  on  the  attack,  and,  finding  himself  in  the 
north  of  Wales,  where  the  savagery  of  genera- 
tions had  destroyed  all  the  wood,  the  young 
bishop  spent  all  his  spare  sixpences  and  shillings 
in  planting  firs  upon  ground  which  seemed 
worthless.  He  outlived  the  six-year  period 
which  most  capitalists  make  their  limit.  He 
kept  on  raising  his  seedling  firs  and  planting 

[23] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


them,  and  when  he  died  his  children  found 
themselves,  to  their  own  surprise,  among  the  rich 
men  in  England,  because  the  trees  had  grown 
even  while  their  father  was  sleeping.  That 
was  Dugald  Dalghetty's  phrase,  as  it  had  been 
embodied  in  his  dying  father's  counsels. 

"Plant  trees,  Dugald,"  said  the  dying  man; 
"they  will  grow  while  you  sleep.  My  father 
said  so  to  me  when  he  was  dying;  but  I  have 
never  had  time  to  attend  to  it."  Unfortunately, 
Dugald  himself  never  found  more  time  for  this 
duty  than  his  father  had. 

But  States  do  not  die,  or  ought  not  die.  States 
take  that  name  because  they  are  established. 
And  any  American  State  which  has  a  statesman 
at  the  head  of  its  finance  department  will  do  well 
to  invest  its  sinking  funds,  so  called,  in  forests. 
Take  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  again,  for  an 
instance.  It  is  our  excellent  plan  here  when  we 
contract  a  loan  to  begin  to  pay  it  at  once.  If  the 
loan  is  for  fifty  years,  one  per  cent  of  the  amount 
is  paid  in  the  first  year  into  the  sinking  fund  of 
that  loan.  It  is  "invested"  for  the  benefit  of 
that  loan.  The  proceeds  of  the  investment  go 
into  the  sinking  fund.  And  when  fifty  years  are 
past  the  sinking  fund  is  more  than  ready  to  re- 
deem the  bonds. 

This  is  an  admirable  plan.  It  keeps  the  credit 


AMERICA 


of  Massachusetts  at  the  very  highest  point.  Still, 
it  is  only  a  paper  plan  after  all.  One  can  imag- 
ine a  hundred  ways  in  which  it  should  break 
down.  A  hard-pressed  legislature  might  bor- 
row from  the  sinking  fund,  as  English  parlia- 
ments have  borrowed  from  their  sinking  funds 
once  and  again.  It  is  even  to  be  conceived  that 
the  bonds  which  belong  to  the  sinking  fund 
might  disappear  before  fifty  years  are  over,  if 
some  irresponsible  clerk  got  hold  of  a  key  which 
he  should  not  handle.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
if  the  Governor  had  a  right  to  invest  this  one 
per  cent  annually  in  forests  or  in  trees,  why,  at 
the  end  of  fifty  years,  Massachusetts  would  have 
a  great  landed  property  which  had  been  im- 
proving itself  every  hour  of  every  day. 

Massachusetts  could  do  what  no  man  or 
woman  could  do — Massachusetts  could  make  the 
proper  laws  to  protect  her  property  and  detail 
the  proper  officers  to  enforce  them.  If  a  man 
flung  away  a  cigar  in  a  Massachusetts  forest,  he 
could  be  treated  as  the  King  of  Saxony  would 
treat  a  man  who  flung  away  a  cigar  in  the  Black 
Forest.  Saxony  received  in  1900  a  million  and 
a  half  dollars,  after  all  expenses  of  administra- 
tion were  paid,  from  her  forests.  Prussia  re- 
ceived in  the  same  year  from  hers  nearly  ten 
million  dollars,  after  a  similar  amount  had  been 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


charged  to  the  forests  for  their  development  and 
care. 

And  this  is  no  matter  of  accidental  detail. 
There  are  many  things  which  states  can  do  and 
individuals  cannot.  This  is  the  reason  why  men 
found  states  and  especially  why  they  found  re- 
publics. States  can  maintain  the  post  office  bet- 
ter than  individuals  can,  and  so  of  lighthouses; 
so  of  justice  between  man  and  man;  so  of  the 
coining  of  money;  so  of  the  regulation  of  com- 
merce; so  of  preserving  the  public  health. 

When,  therefore,  "we,  the  People  of  the 
United  States,"  made  the  nation  of  that  name, 
our  Constitution  stated  six  definite  objects  which 
the  Government  of  the  nation  may  and  must 
attend  to.  Besides  these,  the  Constitution  au- 
thorized the  National  Government  to  "provide 
for  the  common  defence  and  the  general  wel- 
fare." Under  this  clause,  sometimes  with  much 
discussion  and  sometimes  with  none,  the  Govern- 
ment undertakes  other  national  duties.  Such 
are  the  protection  of  the  national  health.  This 
may  be  called  a  part  of  the  common  defence. 
The  nation  would  have  been  fully  justified  in 
its  war  with  Spain  had  it  been  made  simply  to 
keep  out  yellow  fever.  Again,  the  General 
Government  appropriates  money  freely  for  rail- 
roads and  even  for  other  roads.  When  it  needs, 


AMERICA 


the  General  Government  builds  telegraphs  and 
maintains  them. 

Since  the  States  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  slopes 
were  established,  the  nation  has  found  out  that 
it  must  assume  as  a  national  duty  the  business  of 
irrigation,  and  with  every  year  Congress  legis- 
lates in  that  direction.  For  precisely  the  same 
reason,  it  has  now  assumed  the  business  of  main- 
taining national  forests.  The  appropriation  of 
five  million  dollars  for  a  forest  on  the  water  di- 
vides of  the  southern  Appalachians  will  be  an 
important  step  in  this  direction. 

It  is  most  important  because  it  shows  that  we 
have  statesmen  who  are  alive  to  one  of  the  most 
central  of  national  duties. 

FORESTS. 

THIS  nation  ought  never  to  be  surprised 
when  new  conditions  bring  new  duties. 
It  is  no  fault  of  the  makers  of  the 
Constitution  that  they  did  not  state  in 
advance  all  the  details  of  duty  which  would  de- 
mand our  attention  a  century  after  their  time. 
Thus,  in  their  time  it  took  Carver  the  better  part 
of  a  year  to  go  from  the  Atlantic  to  Lake  Mich- 
igan; and  it  took  him  as  long  to  come  back  the 
next  year.     Now  I  can  go  from  New  York  to 

[27] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


Lake  Michigan  in  a  day,  and  it  is  not  queer  that 
the  nation  which  has  to  regulate  commerce  be- 
tween New  York  and  Lake  Michigan  should 
have  some  duties  in  1902  which  it  did  not  have 
in  1789. 

Among  these  duties  which  belong  to  the  na- 
tion, is  the  duty  of  preserving  or  maintaining  the 
forests  of  the  nation.  In  a  small  way,  the 
National  Government  undertook  this  a  century 
ago.  The  Navy  Department  used  to  have  its 
preserves  of  trees  for  shipbuilding,  because  it 
did  not  choose  that  the  nation  should  be  depend- 
ent on  private  resources  or  be  the  victim  of  pri- 
vate rapacity.  And  in  those  days,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  last  century,  the  average  American 
still  regarded  the  forest  as  his  enemy.  But  now 
the  forest  is  no  man's  enemy.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  world  knows  only  too  well  that  the 
destruction  of  forests  has  been  the  signal  for  the 
decline  and  downfall  of  empires.  In  Asia  Mi- 
nor and  in  Syria  were  once  the  finest  regions  of 
the  civilized  world.  Those  regions  received 
the  first  blow  to  their  civilization  in  the  wanton 
'destruction  of  their  forests. 

The  United  States  has  turned  over  a  new  leaf 
in  reserving  the  control  of  large  districts  in  the 
west,  so  that  their  forests  cannot  be  cut  away 
without  the  permission  of  the  central  Govern- 

[28] 


AMERICA 


ment.  We  are  now  carrying  the  same  policy 
farther  in  the  reservation  of  a  great  national 
park  in  the  highlands  of  Tennessee  and  North 
Carolina.  The  bill  providing  for  this  great 
park  went  through  the  Senate  last  year  by  a 
handsome  majority.  We  may  hope  that  even  in 
the  stress  of  the  short  session  it  may  go  through 
the  House  without  serious  opposition.*  In  the 
highlands,  which  will  thus  become  national  prop- 
erty, are  the  headwaters  of  the  rivers  which  water 
Maryland  and  Virginia,  both  Carolinas,  Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee  and  the  Gulf  States  south  of 
them.  We  now  know  that  for  regular  water 
supply  you  must  retain  the  forests,  which  arrest 
the  moisture  of  the  passing  clouds  and  feed  with 
it  the  headwaters  of  the  rivers  below. 

This  is  the  proper  time  for  all  the  citizens  of 
New  England  and  New  York  to  see  to  it  that 
their  alpine  highlands  also  are  taken  into  the 
great  National  Park  system.  The  alpine  regions 
of  the  United  States  are  not  extensive.  One 
could  wish  they  were  more  extensive  than  they 
are.  Some  summits  in  the  Carolinas,  Mt.  Mar- 
cy  and  other  high  summits  of  New  York,  the 
White  Mountains  in  New  Hampshire,  and  Mt. 
Katahdin  in  Maine  are  the  only  four  alpine  sys- 

*Alas !    It  did  not.    But  hopes  remain 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


terns  on  the  Atlantic  side  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. 

The  care  and  oversight  of  the  forests  in  all 
of  these  regions  belongs  to  the  National  Gov- 
ernment. It  must  not  be  left  to  lumber  men 
or  pulp  men  or  mill  owners.  The  water  which 
flows  from  these  summits  is  the  water  of  the 
Nation;  the  forests  which  clothe  them  at  their 
bases  must  be  maintained  for  centuries  to  come, 
and  this  necessity  can  be  commanded  only  by 
such  perpetual  and  systematic  care  of  the  Nation. 
We  are  glad  to  see  public  movements  in  this 
direction  in  the  centres  of  opinion  in  the  States 
most  interested. 

WE,  THE  PEOPLE:  OR  WAR  LORDS. 

A   "WAR  LORD"  on  a  visit  to  another 
"War  Lord"  in  Europe,  has  to  receive 
a  regiment  at  the  first  moment  after  he 
arrives  at  his  friend's  house.      It  is 
just  as  you  think  you  must  have  a  decanter  of 
whiskey  ready  when  certain  people  come  to  see 
you. 

But  when  a  leader  of  men  comes  to  see  you, 
you  do  not  offer  him  a  glass  of  whiskey.  When 
Edison  calls  on  you,  or  Mitchell,  or  Howells,  or 
Bishop  Potter,  you  know  your  man,  and  you  do 

[30] 


AMERICA 


not  offer  him  a  glass  of  whiskey.  King  Edward 
knew  his  man.  He,  therefore,  gave  him  a 
chance  to  review  a  regiment  when  he  made  him 
a  visit.  This  is  what  an  old-fashioned  king, 
who  still  keeps  up  the  traditions  of  "War 
Lords,"  has  to  do  when  another  "War  Lord" 
comes  to  see  him.  Each  of  them  has  to  dress  up 
like  a  soldier  and  to  ride  on  a  horse  and  to  show 
each  other  how  well  they  could  do  if  they  went 
out  to  fight.  In  point  of  fact,  bluff  old  King 
George,  the  second  of  that  name,  as  you  remem- 
ber, is  the  last  of  the  House  of  Hanover  or 
the  House  of  Cobourg  who  ever  smelled  gun- 
powder in  battle. 

How  do  "We  the  People"  entertain  our  guests 
when  "We  the  People"  put  the  "War  Lords" 
into  their  fit  place  and  when  "We  the  People" 
have  a  distinguished  stranger  coming  up  the 
Bay?  In  the  days  just  after  the  Civil  War,  I 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  an  accomplished 
Russian  gentleman  who  had  come  up  the  Bay 
on  a  command  from  the  Czar.  They  have  a 
capital  institution  in  the  government  of  Russia 
which  provides  what  is  known  as  the  Civil  Staff 
for  the  Emperor.  Just  as  the  gentlemen  on  his 
military  staff  know  about  "right  shoulder  shift," 
and  percussion  caps,  and  embalmed  beef,  the 
gentlemen  on  his  Civil  Staff  have  to  know  about 

[30 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


the  administration  of  government.  They  are 
kept  in  motion  all  over  the  world  where  there  is 
any  good  governing  done.  Now,  it  happened 
that  the  Emperor  of  Russia  emancipated  the 
serfs  of  Russia;  it  happened  that  "We  the  Peo- 
ple" on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  had  emancipated 
our  negroes,  and  so  my  friend  had  been  sent  over 
to  spend  two  or  three  years  in  studying  the  ar- 
rangements which  "We  the  People"  had  made 
and  were  making  in  local  government. 

I  wish  that  I  had  and  could  print  in  this  book 
the  quarterly  reports  which  that  man  made  to  his 
Chief  of  Staff.  For  when  he  went  away,  he  knew 
more  of  the  detail  of  the  local  administration 
of  all  our  States  north  of  the  northern  line  of  the 
Carolinas  and  of  Tennessee  than  any  other  man 
who  was  living  at  that  time  knew.  He  would 
spend  a  month  on  the  frontier  to  find  out  how  the 
pioneers  built  their  roads  and  established  their 
schools.  He  would  spend  another  month  in  a 
back  county  in  Virginia,  to  see  how  the  local 
justices  under  their  old  English  forms  of  law 
decide  cases  between  man  and  man — whose  ox 
gored  whose  cow. 

And  after  two  such  years  of  life  in  villages, 
and  at  cross-road  inns,  he  appeared  again  in  our 
civilization  with  his  dress  coat  of  evenings,  and 
still  learning  something  new. 


AMERICA 


"Well,"  he  said  to  me  one  day,  "it  is  two  years 
that  I  have  been  knocking  about  in  America,  and 
I  have  never  seen  a  soldier." 

"Why  should  you?"  I  said.  "What  do  you 
want  of  soldiers?"  "Well  —  why  —  perhaps 
— don't  you  think  that  the  sight  of  a  soldier 
reminds  people  that  there  is  a  government,  that 
there  is  such  a  reality  as  law?"  To  which  ques- 
tion of  his,  I  said  that  I  thought  it  was  a  very 
good  thing  that  people  should  be  reminded  of  the 
government.  But,  I  said,  fortunately  with  us, 
sovereigns  do  not  sit  on  a  throne  supported  by 
bayonets.  I  said  that  the  sovereign  here  showed 
himself  in  his  acts  of  beneficence  to  everybody. 
I  remember  I  put  to  him  this  question:  "Have 
not  your  letters  been  well  delivered  here?"  And 
he  said  that  they  had  been  admirably  delivered, 
that  the  mail  service  of  the  country  was  the  best 
which  he  could  conceive  of,  giving  me  the  history 
of  the  way  in  which  a  particular  letter  had  fol- 
lowed him.  I  said,  and  I  was  proud  to  say,  that 
in  such  service  to  each  of  the  people,  "We  the 
People"  were  able  to  show  what  government  is 
and  what  it  is  for.  Government  is  an  arrange- 
ment which  all  the  people  make  for  the  benefit 
of  each  of  the  people.  The  Swiss  Confederacy 
has  put  it  on  its  coat  of  arms,  "All  for  each,  and 
each  for  all." 

[33] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


This  is  a  new  discovery  to  the  people  who 
have  been  trained  under  feudal  institutions,  un- 
der aristocratic  institutions,  or  autocratic  insti- 
tutions. But  it  is  the  old  habit  of  people  who 
havebeen  trained  as  Americans  have  been  trained, 
who  have  been  of  the  government  and  of  the  gov- 
erned for  nearly  three  hundred  years. 

A  great  deal  better  preparation  for  the  busi- 
ness of  government  has  the  average  American 
citizen  who  has  worked  out  his  taxes  on  the  high- 
way than  any  man  who  has  known  nothing  but 
the  forms  of  the  military  institutions  of  Europe, 
as  those  Russian  gentlemen  had  been  trained,  or 
this  unfortunate  "War  Lord"  of  Germany,  who 
is  going  a-visiting.  Governments,  like  other 
things,  are  tested  by  their  fruits,  not  by  their  fuss 
or  feathers,  by  their  epaulettes  or  their  dress 
parades. 

"We  the  People"  have  a  good  many  servants. 
We  expect  them  to  earn  their  wages,  and,  on  the 
whole,  they  do. 

PEOPLE  OR  KINGS?    TAXES. 

IN  the  old-fashioned  government  of  the  Old 
World,  taxes  were  imposed  for  the  use 
of  the  King  or  the  Emperor.     He  wanted 
an  army,  or  he  wanted  a  palace.     The 
people  who  worked  for  him,  therefore,  put  on 

[34] 


AMERICA 


the  taxes  where  the  money  could  be  most  easily 
collected.  And  the  whole  system  of  revenue, 
as  it  is  understood  in  the  books,  began  in  that 
system.  It  was  natural  enough,  and  from  the 
King's  point  of  view  it  answered  every  purpose. 

But  in  the  absolute  change  of  everything, 
between  government  by  an  autocrat  and  govern- 
ment of  the  people,  all  this  changes  in  a  republic, 
or  ought  to  change.  The  people  needs  taxes. 
It  is  willing  to  pay  them.  But  it  does  not  need, 
as  the  King  did,  to  place  them  here  or  there, 
where  it  is  handiest  for  the  publicans  to  get  to- 
gether the  money.  On  the  other  hand,  it  wants 
to  collect  the  money,  not  by  taxing  articles  of 
prime  necessity,  but  by  taxing  such  luxuries  as 
those  who  like  them  can  afford  to  pay  for. 

Take  the  central  instance  of  water  again. 
Everybody,  literally  everybody,  needs  water, 
must  have  it.  How  absurd  it  would  be  to  tax 
water.  We  say  everybody  shall  pay  for  the 
water  he  uses,  just  what  it  costs  us  to  bring  it  to 
him.  We  cannot  do  this  precisely.  But  we  do 
it  as  nearly  as  we  can.  And  when  the  water 
dues  afford  more  money  than  the  cost  of  the 
service  and  of  the  money  which  was  needed  to 
bring  it,  we  reduce  the  water  rates.  We  do  not 
tax  the  water. 

Another   necessity   of   life   is  wood.     In   a 

[35] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


country  like  ours  we  need  wood  right  and  left, 
everywhere.  We  need  it  to  burn,  we  need  it 
for  the  shingles  over  our  head,  and  the  floors 
under  our  feet.  We  need  it  for  the  chairs  we 
sit  on,  and  for  hoe  handles  and  for  ships,  and  for 
the  backs  of  clothes  brushes,  as  a  friend  at  my 
side  reminds  me. 

Wood  was,  therefore,  an  excellent  thing  to 
tax  in  the  European  system  of  government. 
"Oh,  yes!  see,  all  these  poor  things  must  have 
wood.  So  we  will  tax  their  wood  and  they  will 
have  to  pay."  Natural  enough. 

But  suppose  these  "poor  things"  become  the 
Sovereign? 

Why  should  the  sovereign  annoy  himself? 
Why  should  he  forever  be  taxing  his  toothpicks, 
the  wheels  of  his  carriage,  the  floor  of  his  house 
and  the  shingles  on  his  roof? 

When  he  learns  what  it  is  to  be  sovereign,  he 
will  make  his  own  business  as  easy  for  himself 
as  he  can. 

In  our  affair,  why  do  we  tax  the  Canadian 
lumber?  Every  man  of  us  wants  to  have  lumber 
cheap. 

Nobody  wants  to  have  our  forests  cut  down, 
and  our  streams  dried  up,  except  the  lumber 
lords,  who  want  to  steal  from  the  future,  to  pile 
up  what  is  stolen  in  barns  to-day. 

[36] 


AMERICA 


Everybody  literally  wants  cheap  fuel,  quite  as 
much  as  cheap  water.  Why  should  the  sov- 
ereign tax  his  own  fireplace  and  palace  furnace? 
The  place  to  begin  is  the  duty  on  Canadian  wood 
and  the  duty  on  imported  coal. 

LOCAL  OPTION. 

U  T       OCAL  OPTION"  has  been  and  is 
spoken  of  as  if  the  two  words  meant 
-1 — -^     of  course  something   about   drink- 
ing.    In  one  place  an  Optionist  is 
a  man  who  wants  an  eleven  o'clock  or  an  eye- 
opener.     In  another  place,  he  is  a  man  who 
wants  his  water  straight  and  filtered.     There  is 
much  danger  that  a  great  principle  of  govern- 
ment may  be  neglected  by  such  careless  talk. 

Local  Option  gives  to  the  people  of  a  town,  or 
even  of  a  county,  a  sort  of  responsibility  in  the 
management  of  their  own  affairs,  which  can  be 
gained  in  no  other  way.  What  makes  the  dif- 
ference between  a  neat,  clean  village  in  Switzer- 
land and  the  God-forsaken  dirt  and  abomina- 
tions of  other  parts  of  Europe  which  could  easily 
be  named,  but  Local  Option?  If  it  is  my  vil- 
lage, my  street,  my  public  square,  my  Town  Hall, 
I  am  ashamed  when  it  is  neglected  or  defiled. 
If  it  is  the  baron's,  or  the  squire's,  or  the  knight 
of  the  shire's,  why  the  knight  of  the  shire,  or 

[37] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


the  squire,  or  the  baron,  may  take  care  of  it. 
If  he  takes  my  money,  why  he  may  see  to  the 
pavements. 

You  cannot  make  the  rulers  in  Europe  under- 
stand what  self-government  means.  They  real- 
ly think  that  when  you  have  said  that  once  in 
two  or  three  years  the  men  of  a  community  go 
and  vote  for  Mr.  A.  or  Dr.  Z.  to  be  a  public 
officer,  these  people  govern  themselves.  And 
then  Mr.  A.  or  Dr.  Z.  may  send  down  to  my 
town  an  officer  from  the  capital  of  the  country 
to  tell  me  where  to  build  my  bridge,  or  how  to 
grade  my  road,  or  whether  the  schoolmaster 
shall  spell  honor  with  two  n's  or  not,  according 
as  they  like  at  headquarters. 

Now,  the  truth  is,  that  when  you  have  real 
self-government,  John  and  Tom  and  Dick  and 
Harry  and  I,  and  a  lot  more  of  the  neighbors, 
get  together.  "Together"  is  the  word.  We 
talk  this  thing  over.  We  say  we  will  have  the 
schoolhouse  here,  and  we  will  buy  our  spelling- 
books  there.  The  road  shall  turn  off  the  ledge 
by  the  Widow  Slocum's,  and  it  shall  go  on  the 
level  by  John  Hill's.  We  say  that  we  will  turn 
out  and  mend  the  road  on  such  a  week  in  May. 
And  what  is  more,  we  do  it.  I  carry  my  spade, 
and  the  boys  carry  the  shovels  and  drive  the 
oxen,  and  we  build  the  new  road  together. 

[38] 


AMERICA 


You  cannot  do  that  sort  of  thing  everywhere. 
But  it  is  a  mighty  good  thing  when  we  can  do  it. 
And  self-government  is  the  government  of  peo- 
ple who  carry  that  thing  as  far  as  they  can. 
Local  Option  means  thatyou  are  trying  to  do  this. 
It  does  not  refer  to  liquor  merely.  It  may  refer 
to  schools,  to  roads,  to  the  choice  of  public  ser- 
vants, to  half  the  affairs  of  administration. 

No  county  in  New  York  would  like  it  much 
if  a  "prefect"  were  sent  down  from  Albany  to 
run  it.  Nor  would  any  school  in  Connecticut 
like  it  much  if  the  people  were  told  they  must 
buy  the  school  chairs  at  No.  999  North  Main 
Street  in  Hartford. 

Yet  that  is  what  would  happen  if  we  had  not 
now  a  certain  measure  of  "Local  Option." 


[39] 


Co-operation   and    Coal 


OUR  WEALTH  IN  COMMON. 

IN  a  letter  which  I  wrote  to  be  read  at  a  pub- 
lic meeting  about  the  coal  strike,  I  said 
that  the  Pennsylvania  strike  led  the  way 
directly  for  the  only  logical  solution,  the 
ownership  of  the  coal  properties  by  the  State 
of  Pennsylvania,  or  eventually  by  the  nation.  It 
is  really  pathetic  to  see  on  how  many  sensible 
people  this  idea  falls  as  if  it  had  never  been 
broached  before.     I  may  say,  of  course,  that  the 
great  majority  of  thinking  men  have  studied  the 
importance  of  such  a  solution;  but  a  good  many 
people  whom  you  would  class  among  thinking 
men  have  spoken  to  me  of  the  suggestion  as  if 
it  were  an  absolute  novelty. 

To  New  Englanders  in  particular  the  sugges- 
tion is  not  a  novelty,  and  you  are  happy  to  find 
that  it  is  generally  peoplewhohave  been  educated 
under  absolute  governments  or  under  feudalism 
who  think  of  it  as  a  novelty.  Not  always,  but 
generally.  The  truth  is  that  so  soon  as  the  men 

[40] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

trained  to  English  views  of  freedom  landed  here 
and  could  kick  off  the  superstitions  of  feudalism, 
as  Winthrop  and  Winslow  and  the  people  of 
both  colonies  did  at  once,  they  went  into  the  gov- 
ernment ownership  of  the  essentials.  The  gov- 
ernment owned  the  roads  from  the  beginning 
and  almost  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
For  a  little  while  turnpikes  owned  by  incorpora- 
ted companies  were  the  fashion;  but  their  failure 
was  so  apparent  that  most  of  the  turnpikes 
of  the  country  are  now  a  part  of  the  pub- 
lic property.  Originally,  all  churches  were  the 
property  of  the  public,  all  schoolhouses  were, 
as  schoolhouses  are  to  this  hour.  Indeed,  in 
practice  every  church  edifice  is  now  so  far  a  part 
of  the  public  property  that  no  tax  is  imposed 
upon  it — more  than  would  a  tax  be  imposed 
upon  the  State  house  or  court  house. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  that  the  light-houses  in 
New  England,  as  now  in  all  the  United  States, 
are  a  part  of  the  property  of  the  public.  It  is  only 
under  the  artificial  system  of  the  English  courts 
that  the  light-houses  in  England  are  held  to  this 
hour  by  private  boards. 

Naturally,  in  such  a  system,  when  they  came 
round  to  whale  fisheries  and  mackerel  fisheries  on 
any  considerable  scale,  the  fishing  was  carried  on 
by  partnership  as  large  as  the  business  required. 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


The  State  did  not  send  fishing  boats  to  sea,  but 
the  men  who  took  the  boats  to  sea  clubbed  to- 
gether to  do  it.  No  one  was  paid  special  wages ; 
but  they  shared,  each  man  according  to  a  lot  de- 
termined upon,  in  the  profits  or  in  the  charges  of 
the  voyage. 

Just  as  soon  as  it  became  evident  that  towns 
and  cities  must  be  provided  with  water  by  aque- 
ducts or  reservoirs,  under  the  natural  genius  of 
republican  life  the  cities  and  towns  undertook 
this  work;  and  they  now  own  the  reservoirs  and 
the  water.  We  have  advanced  so  far  in  this 
natural  system  that  the  cities  and  towns  now  own 
large  libraries  which  provide  everybody  with 
reading.  They  own  large  hospitals,  where  every- 
body may  be  cured,  as  the  State,  from  a  very 
early  period  in  the  last  century,  has  owned  its 
own  hospitals,  and  has  refused  to  send  its  wards 
to  what  they  call  private  institutions. 

In  this  way  we  have  become  familiarized  with 
the  ownership  of  wealth  in  common.  Mr.  Ernst 
tells  us  that  Winthrop  first  used  the  word  "Com- 
monwealth" for  a  political  organization,  the  use 
of  it  previous  to  that  time  having  been  its  use  to 
represent  the  property  owned  by  all,  as  commons 
for  the  feeding  of  cattle  or  the  privilege  of  fuel 
in  the  public  forests.  To  take  other  instances, 
the  State  preserved  the  beaches  as  landing-places 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  or  women, 
and  the  shores  between  high  water  and  low 
water  are  to  this  moment  held  in  common.  So 
the  great  ponds,  as  they  are  called  in  distinction 
from  ponds  which  can  be  enclosed  by  private 
ownership,  are  used  for  the  common  right  of  all 
the  people  in  the  towns  in  which  they  are.  When 
the  time  for  the  Erie  Canal  came,  and  the  Cham- 
plain  Canal;  the  State  of  New  York  built  them; 
and  it  now  owns  them,  to  its  great  profit.  To 
the  profit  of  this  reader,  also,  and  of  this  writer; 
for  the  bread  on  our  tables  to-day  is  materially 
cheaper  because  the  State  owns  these  great  water- 
ways. 

The  rule  is  perhaps  nowhere  put  down  as  mat- 
ter of  statute  or  constitutional  right,  but  the 
principle  seems  to  be  simple.  It  is  well  for  the 
State  to  keep  its  direct  control  of  those  properties 
or  rights  in  which  every  person  is  directly  inter- 
ested. Such  are  the  rights  of  water  to  drink, 
the  rights  of  health  and  air.  The  State  exercises 
absolute  control.  The  State,  so  to  speak,  owns 
the  air;  and  no  individual  may  poison  it,  because 
fresh  air  is  one  of  the  necessities.  The  State 
controls  the  use  of  light,  and  places  the  limits 
by  which  my  neighbor  is  restricted  from  cutting 
off  the  light  from  my  home. 

In  the  case  of  fuel  the  practical  question  which 

[43] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


arises  is  whether  the  fuel  considered  is  or  is  not 
a  matter  of  prime  necessity  for  all  the  people  of 
the  State.  In  1825,  when  a  man  was  laughed  at 
who  bought  a  ton  of  anthracite  coal,  it  would 
have  seemed  preposterous  to  compare  the  supply 
of  that  coal  with  the  supply  of  water.  And  peo- 
ple have  got  into  the  habit,  therefore,  of  think- 
ing that  the  profit  on  anthracite  coal  is  a  sort  of 
God-given  privilege  to  what  is,  after  all,  a  hand- 
ful of  people — only  a  few  hundred  thousand  at 
the  most — living  between  the  Susquehanna  and 
the  Delaware  rivers.  But  this  is  a  mere  acci- 
dent; and,  if  the  supply  of  anthracite  coal  be- 
comes necessary  as  an  important  part  of  the  fuel 
supply  of  the  nation,  why,  the  State,  which  of 
course  has  the  power,  seems  to  have  the  duty  of 
asserting  again  the  control  which  it  had  in  the 
beginning  over  these  properties.  Only  one  is 
coolly  told  now  that  the  rights  of  property  must 
be  respected.  Of  course  they  must,  precisely  as 
the  rights  of  the  people  of  West  Boylston  were 
respected  when  the  State  of  Massachusetts  found 
that  it  needed  most  of  that  town  for  the  metro- 
politan water  supply.  And  the  people  of  West 
Boylston  knew  perfectly  well  that,  as  citizens  of 
Massachusetts,  they  must  stand  out  of  the  way; 
and  they  gave  up  their  beautiful  town  to  be  made 
into  a  beautiful  lake.  They  had  to.  The  peo- 

[44] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

pie  between  the  Susquehanna  and  the  Delaware 
rivers  must  be  taught  the  same  lesson.  When 
they  took  their  lands,  they  were  citizens  of  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania;  and  they  have  held  their 
lands  subject  to  the  conditions  that,  when  the 
people  needed  the  land,  the  people,  which  is  the 
sovereign,  would  take  them  back  and  would  use 
them. 

It  seems  to  me  rather  curious  that  in  a  com- 
munity like  ours  people  of  the  average  intelli- 
gence choose  to  forget  how  much  of  all  our 
property  is  now  our  wealth  in  common.  This 
is  certain :  that  for  taking  care  of  it  and  manag- 
ing it  we  people  in  Eastern  Massachusetts  prac- 
tically pay  more  than  a  quarter  of  our  income. 
The  truth  is  that  more  than  a  quarter  of  our 
property  is  in  our  wealth  in  common.  I  find 
that  at  present  those  of  my  friends  who  have  any 
property  are  very  glad  if  they  can  get  5  per  cent 
interest  upon  it.  I  observe  at  the  same  time  that 
for  supplying  them  with  the  prime  necessities  of 
justice,  health,  education,  easy  intercourse  be- 
tween house  and  house  and  between  town  and 
town,  for  providing  them  with  books  and  open 
churches,  and  hospitals  and  public  parks,  the 
State  of  Massachusetts  and  the  city  of  Boston  re- 
quire them  to  pay  a  third  part  of  this  5  per  cent 
into  the  public  treasury. 

[45] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


The  more  cynical  among  them  growl  because 
of  this  requisition.  But  I  observe  that  the  same 
people  send  their  children  to  public  schools,  walk 
on  the  sidewalk  when  they  go  to  make  afternoon 
visits  or  to  cut  off  their  coupons,  that  they  send 
to  the  public  library  if  they  want  to  read  their 
Adam  Smith,  and  come  to  church  if  they  want  to 
hear  Mr.  Edward  Cummings.  Why  the  grum- 
blers of  this  sort  are  disinclined  to  any  simple 
measure  which  will  save  us  from  coal  panics  or 
famines,  I  can  understand — they  will  always 
grumble.  But  why  people  who  are  used  to  own- 
ing Boston  Common  and  the  Boston  Public  Li- 
brary and  Washington  Street  and  Tremont 
Street  in  common,  who  know  that  the  school- 
houses,  the  city  hospitals,  and  the  Franklin  Park 
are  owned  in  common,  why  they  should  think  it 
would  be  a  very  exceptional  thing  to  own  coal 
mines  in  common  I  do  not  see. 

CO-OPERATION. 
THE  TOM,  DICK,  AND  HARRY  SOCIETY. 

LAST  May,  on  one  of  those  pleasant  after- 
noons in  the  first  half  of  the  month, 
Richard  Roe  and  Thomas  Hazeldon 
found  themselves  sitting  side  by  side, 
smoking  on  one  of  the  seats  in  Madison  Square. 

[46] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

This  had  happened  several  times  lately.  They 
bought  the  afternoon  Journal  in  the  car,  got  out 
as  it  passed  the  Square,  and  as  long  as  the  cigars 
lasted  they  sat  in  a  shady  place  they  had  found. 

That  fruit  man,  the  same  who  is  with  those 
Cuban  people — Smith  his  name  is,  Harry  T. 
Smith,  joined  them.  They  both  knew  him,  but 
they  do  not  generally  sit  on  the  same  seat  to 
smoke. 

But  this  time  when  Smith  joined  them  he  said 
at  once,  "I  say,  fellows,  how  much  coal  do  you 
lay  in  for  a  winter?  I  have  been  talking  with 
one  of  the  Philadelphia  men.  I  met  him  at 
Cienfuegos  last  year.  He  wants  to  bring  me 
three  hundred  tons  of  hard  coal  and  deliver  it 
where  I  say  before  the  first  of  June.  I  don't 
want  five  tons  myself.  But  a  lot  of  my  neigh- 
bors up  at  Yonkers  have  chipped  in  and  some 
men  in  the  cars  this  morning  chipped  in  and  I 
asked  every  man  I  met  at  lunch  if  he  did  not 
want  some.  We  are  going  to  share  and  share, 
and  pay  them  on  the  first  of  June  just  what  the 
coal  cost  over  at  Hoboken  when  it  gets  there." 

Well,  Hazeldon  took  eight  tons  for  himself 
and  his  sister,  and  Roe  took  three  tons  for  his 
house  and  three  for  his  office. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  the  "Tom,  Dick, 
and  Harry  Combination"  which  has  been  talked 

[47] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


of  so  much  by  all  the  people  who  have  heard  of 
it,  in  which  all  those  men  who  chipped  in  in  May 
are  so  comfortable  just  now,  while  all  the  rest  of 
us  are  cursing  and  swearing. 

If  co-operation  sometimes  succeeds  as  well  as 
this,  why  does  it  not  succeed  so  always?  If  I 
spoke  to  five  sensible  men  this  morning  about 
co-operation,  they  would  notably  all  say  that  co- 
operation had  always  failed. 

The  truth  is  that  co-operation  in  manufacture 
has  won  its  best  successes  in  France.  Co-opera- 
tion in  insurance  and  buying  and  building  of 
houses  has  won  its  success  in  the  United  States. 
Co-operation  in  such  affairs  as  this  of  the  "Tom, 
Dick,  and  Harry"  coal  purchase  has  succeeded 
marvellously  in  England,  in  the  great  Rochdale 
co-operative  system.  But  that  has  not  succeeded 
in  America.  Co-operative  house-building  has 
hardly  been  attempted  in  France,  and  though 
there  are  a  few  co-operative  factories  in  England 
and  America,  they  make  no  part  of  our  system. 

The  difficulty  in  America  which  first  appears 
in  introducing  the  Rochdale  system  here  is  the 
willingness,  even  eagerness,  of  our  workmen  to 
move  from  place  to  place.  Every  man  of  us  has 
emigrant  blood,  not  many  generations  back.  We 
all  "thirst  for  the  horizon."  While  in  Rochdale, 
or  I  might  say  any  other  manufacturing  town 

[48] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

in  England,  almost  every  serious  man  wants  to 
stay  there  until  he  dies;  in  America,  every  intel- 
ligent workman  wants  to  be  foot-free,  to  start  at 
a  fortnight's  notice  with  his  family  for  Seattle, 
for  Denver,  or  for  Manila. 

Just  as  your  nice  and  neat  Rochdale  co-opera- 
tive store  No.  i  gets  established  in  New  Shef- 
field, Nahum  Stringfellow  comes  in,  one  of  the 
best  men  on  its  board,  and  he  says  to  Mr.  Many- 
penny,  the  treasurer,  "Manypenny,  I  am  going 
to  take  my  family  to  Luzon,  and  I  shall  want  to 
take  out  all  my  stock  here  next  Saturday."  Now, 
the  shops  on  the  Rochdale  system  cannot  stand 
this  long,  and  we  must  contrive  in  America  a 
system  of  our  own,  by  which  the  co-operative 
plan  can  be  fitted  in  with  our  habits.  This  we 
can  do,  for  if  America  has  some  disadvantages 
it  has  many  advantages.  A  country  in  which  a 
thousand  men  can  club  together  to  buy  and  build 
their  homes  can  certainly  make  arrangements  by 
which  a  thousand  men  can  buy  their  coal,  their 
flour,  their  butter,  their  coffee  and  their  tea. 


[49] 


<WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


CO-OPERATION  AGAIN. 

THE  coal  famine  and  the  success  of  such 
arrangements  as  the' 'Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry   Combination"  have  set  thou- 
sands of  persons,  between  here  and 
Seattle,  to  devising  similar  plans  by  which  they 
may  buy,  not  only  coal,  but  other  things  cheaper. 
It  is  well  known  that  a  third  of  the  people  in 
England,  almost  all  the  workingmen,  buy  what 
they  need  by  a  co-operative  system.     Why  not 
Nahum  Rhoades  in  West  New  Padua,  South  Da- 
kota, as  well  as  Mr.  George  Holyoake  in  Roch- 
dale ?     Some  people  are  talking  sense  about  this 
and   many   talk   nonsense.     Some   know   what 
they  are  talking  about,  and  some  do  not.     The 
American  people  will  work  out  its  own  salvation 
in  the  matter.     No  fear  of  that  I     But  we  need 
not  make  blundering  experiments.     There  is  a 
need  of  advice  and  a  need  of  caution.     And  as 
the  wise  Turk  said,  "Let  those  who  know  tell 
those  who  do  not  know." 

George  Holyoake,  the  great  authority,  always 
says  squarely  that  the  combiners  must  have  more 
than  money  profit  in  mind,  indeed,  they  must 
have  something  larger  and  better  than  money 
in  mind,  first  of  all.  Send  for  one  of  his  books 
about  the  Rochdale  plan.  An  Odd  Fellows 

[50] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

lodge  is  a  good  co-operative  club.  Any  church 
with  a  good  democratic  organization  and  a 
working  bureau  for  mutual  help  is  good.  For 
the  men  and  women  in  the  plan  must  not  be 
asking  for  dividends  all  the  time.  They  are  do- 
ing this  thing  because  they  do  not  want  to  cut 
each  other's  throats. 

Again,  the  co-operative  store  in  West  New 
Padua  had  better  deal  in  what  everybody  wants 
and  not  try  for  filigree  or  feathers.  Thus, 
everybody  wants  pitchers  and  basins.  Every- 
body wants  stockings  and  shoes.  Everybody 
wants  matches  and  burning  fluid;  everybody 
wants  nails  and  tacks  and  screw-drivers  and  ham- 
mers. Everybody  wants  fuel.  And  for  those 
things  which  there  is  a  steady  demand  for,  the 
store  may  take  care.  But  everybody  does  not 
want  a  chromo  copy  of  the  Dulwich  Madonna, 
nor  Story's  Commentary  on  the  Constitution. 

The  store  must  have  capital.  The  merit  of 
the  Rochdale  system  is  that  every  person  who 
buys  a  paper  of  pins  becomes,  sooner  or  later, 
an  owner  in  the  common  stock,  which  has  to  be 
kept  in  the  store.  But,  as  I  said  once  before 
here,  no  business  can  be  maintained,  if  one  of  the 
partners  in  the  firm  can  come  in  of  a  sudden 
and  say,  "Fellows,  I  am  going  off  to  Manila, 
and  I  must  have  all  my  capital  in  money  next 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


Monday."  Whoever  goes  into  co-operation 
goes  in  for  the  voyage,  as  we  say  down  East, 
and  he  had  better  go  in  for  many  voyages. 

Now,  all  the  mistakes  here  hinted  at  have  been 
tried  and  tried  again.  There  is  no  reason  under 
the  heavens  why  North  Padua  or  South  Leyden 
should  try  them  again.  If  the  first  lodge,  or 
circle,  or  grange  that  wants  to  try  the  experiment 
means  success,  they  will  study  carefully  the  Eng- 
lish Rochdale  rules.  Then  they  will  study  the 
rules  of  the  co-operative  building  societies  of 
New  York.  Rochdale  has  succeeded  in  England. 
The  building  societies  have  succeeded  here.  The 
sensible  "combine"  will  begin  by  combining 
these  two  systems.  And  the  sensible  combine 
will  be  wise,  if,  in  the  words  of  our  fine  national 
proverb,  it  do  not  bite  off  more  than  it  can  chew. 

CO-OPERATION  AGAIN. 

SOMETIMES  the  system  of  our  social 
order   receives    a    sudden   shock    from 
some  runaway  trolley  car,  and  people 
wake  up  enough  to  wonder  whether  it 
cannot  be  improved. 

"Perhaps  that  fellow  who  said  last  Sunday 
that  we  are  all  each  other's  keepers  and  that  we 
must  bear  each  other's  burdens  knew  what  he 

[5*] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

was  talking  about."  Such  is  the  ejaculation  of 
some  worthy  old  gentleman  who  has  just  come 
back  from  the  safe  deposit  where  he  has  been 
cutting  off  his  coupons,  and  has  stopped  at  the 
coal  office  to  be  told  he  can  only  have  one  ton 
of  coal.  He  looks  for  his  Adam  Smith,  and  can- 
not find  out  what  is  the  matter.  He  curses 
Adam  Smith,  for  which  he  has  more  reason  than 
for  most  of  his  profane  ejaculations.  And,  as 
he  selects  his  cigar  and  settles  down  to  his  Na- 
tion, his  little  granddaughter,  wishing  to  assuage 
his  anger,  asks  if  people  have  tried  the  Golden 
Rule. 

Then  the  old  grumbler  rouses  up  enough  to 
say  that  he  believes  they  tried  "co-operation," 
and  that  he  thinks  it  failed. 

I  mean  by  all  this  that  "co-operation"  is  talked 
about  and  inquired  about  just  when  people  feel 
the  pinch  and  screw.  But  I  observe  that  the 
grumblers  did  not  choose  or  care  to  help  co-op- 
eration forward  until  their  own  fingers  were 
pinched  in  the  door.  Happily,  it  is  never  too 
late  to  learn;  and  one  is  glad  to  know  that  the 
friends  of  co-operation  seize  the  opportunity  to 
expound  their  simple  gospel  to  all  who  have  ears 
to  hear. 

At  almost  any  time  in  the  last  twelve  months 
hard  wood  for  fuel  could  be  bought  at  the  wharf 

[53] 


'WE,   THE  PEOPLE" 


in  Boston  for  six  dollars  and  fifty  cents  a 
cord. 

If  I  had  been  one  of  fifty  persons  who  met 
last  April  in  Boston,  and  each  laid  down  thirteen 
dollars,  I  should  on  this  first  of  October  have 
two  cords  of  hard  wood  awaiting  my  order.  I 
was  not  one.  So,  when  I  go  to  the  wood  wharf 
to-day,  I  am  told  that  by  paying  fourteen  dollars 
I  can  have  one  cord,  but  only  one.  This  little 
fact  arrests  my  attention,  and  I  begin  muttering 
about  "co-operation."  I  begin  even  to  wonder 
whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  if  I  had 
heard  Prof.  Peabody's  lectures  on  "Co-opera- 
tion," or  bought  Mr.  Lloyd's  book  or  Mr. 
Cooke's  or  even  Dr.  Hale's.  Perhaps,  if  I  had, 
I  should  have  two  cords  of  wood  instead  of  one. 

For  readers  in  this  semi-penitential  vein  of 
thought,  about  their  own  omissions,  the  follow- 
ing words  are  written. 

It  is  quite  true,  as  the  grumbler  says,  that 
while  co-operation  has  been  signally  successful 
in  some  countries  and  in  some  undertakings,  ex- 
periments tried  in  this  business  have  often  utterly 
failed.  The  writers  on  the  subject  are  apt  to 
say  that  co-operation  in  manufacture  has  had  its 
best  success  in  France.  It  seems  that  the  Ger- 
man system  of  "co-operation"  in  banking  has 
been  more  successful  than  any  such  system  in 

[54] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

other  countries.  In  America  "co-operation" 
has  taken  the  control  of  insurance,  so  that  almost 
all  insurance  on  lives  here  is  made  on  the  co- 
operative principle.  Very  remarkable  success 
has  been  achieved  by  the  co-operative  building 
societies,  and  I  like  to  say  here  that  I  think  Mr. 
Josiah  Quincy's  advice  and  experience  and  ad- 
venture gave  a  start  in  that  business  which  it  has 
never  lost.  In  England  great  success  has  been 
gained  in  co-operative  trade.  In  Mr.  Lloyd's 
very  valuable  book,  published  three  or  four  years 
ago,  he  gives  the  figures  which  show  the  success 
of  the  great  movement  there.  In  one  table  in 
his  Appendix,  as  a  result  of  thirty-four  years' 
progress  of  the  English  Co-operative  Wholesale 
Society,  he  shows  that  its  business  in  1897  was 
the  purchase  and  distribution  of  articles  needed 
in  the  co-operative  stores  amounting  to  fifty-nine 
million  dollars'  worth  in  that  year.  I  believe 
that  the  purchase  and  sale  of  tea  by  the  central 
organization  was  larger  than  that  of  any  other 
importing  corporation  with  one  exception. 

The  genius  of  America  has  always  run  in  this 
direction.  The  establishment  of  free  schools  in 
the  beginning  here  was  a  piece  of  co-operation 
for  education.  The  whale  fisheries  of  Nantucket, 
the  mackerel  fisheries  of  other  ports,  were  always 
to  a  very  recent  period  conducted  on  the  prin- 

[55] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


ciple  of  co-operation ;  that  is  to  say,  each  person 
concerned  in  the  ship  or  the  schooner  which  tried 
the  adventure  received  a  proportional  part  of  the 
profit  and  paid  his  proportional  part  of  the  ex- 
penses, according  to  a  statement  agreed  upon  in 
advance.  By  this  plan  every  man  and  every  boy 
had  his  "lay"  in  the  voyage.  So  soon  as  the  neces- 
sity of  supplying  towns  with  water  appeared, 
the  American  cities  adopted  the  co-operative 
system.  And  in  almost  every  instance — I  know 
myself  of  no  exception — the  water  supply  is  reg- 
ulated on  the  principle  of  all  for  each  and  each 
for  all. 

The  Rochdale  system  in  England,  which  has 
had  such  extraordinary  success,  is  not  a  system 
for  manufacture  nor  insurance  nor  banking.  It 
is  a  system  in  which  those  who  unite  buy  what 
they  want  at  wholesale,  to  divide  among  the 
members,  with  no  charge  but  the  expense  of  the 
operation.  In  1 844  a  few  workmen  in  the  man- 
ufacturing town  of  Rochdale  met  and  agreed  to 
buy  together  some  supplies  which  they  would 
need  for  their  families.  This  enterprise  has 
gone  so  far  that  it  has  extended  into  the  great 
system  of  co-operative  shops  and  stores  which 
now  covers  England.  But  the  Rochdale  sys- 
tem has  never  succeeded  in  America  for  more 
than  a  limited  period  of  time.  For  this  failure 

[56] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

there  are  many  reasons;  and  when  one  tells  such 
a  story  as  I  have  told  above,  of  the  imaginary 
fifty  people  who  bought  their  wood  last  April 
and  are  now,  if  they  exist,  laughing  in  their 
sleeves  at  us  who  did  not,  one  has  to  take  these 
failures  into  account. 

My  friend  Mr.  George  Littlefield  is  one  of 
the  persons  who  has  studied  them,  and  I  am 
very  glad  to  know  that  Mr.  Littlefield  and  his 
friends  propose  to  establish  in  Massachusetts  a 
system  of  co-operation  based  upon  the  English 
success  and  free  from  the  difficulties  which  have 
heretofore  obstructed  success  in  America.  If 
they  should  ask  my  advice,  I  should  say  that  I 
do  not  know  much  about  it,  but  that  I  have 
studied  the  matter  carefully  for  fifty  years  and 
am  satisfied  of  two  or  three  things. 

First,  that  the  American  workman  has  in  his 
very  blood  the  passion  to  wander.  He  is  cer- 
tainly a  descendant  of  the  emigrant;  and  he  has 
the  emigrant  life  in  his  veins.  While,  therefore, 
an  English  co-operative  store  is  well-nigh  sure 
that  most  of  its  co-operators  want  to  stay  in  that 
place  until  they  die,  the  manager  of  the  Ameri- 
can co-operative  store  must  remember  that  some 
of  the  best  fellows  in  it  may  want  to  go  to  Duluth 
or  Seattle  to-morrow  and  to  take  with  them  all 
that  they  have  invested.  The  English  plan  must 

[57] 


,   THE  PEOPLE* 


be  adapted  to  this  habit,  or  it  will  not  suc- 
ceed. 

Second,  I  am  quite  sure  that  the  co-operative 
system  must  be  so  arranged  as  to  provide  simply 
for  the  essentials  of  life.  The  co-operative 
store  may  deal  successfully  in  wood,  coal,  flour, 
thread,  needles,  and  other  things  which  every- 
body wants;  but  it  had  better  not  attempt  the 
general  or  fancy  trade.  The  same  rule  applies 
in  matters  of  government  ownership.  The 
State  is  wise  which  owns  canals,  which  everybody 
needs.  The  State  is  not  wise  which  undertakes 
to  own  the  dwelling-houses,  because  one  family 
wants  one  sort  of  house  and  another  family 
wants  another. 

Third,  and  chiefly,  the  English  co-operative 
stores  all  started  with  a  moral  or  idealistic  theory 
at  bottom.  The  founders  did  not  say,  "Go  to, 
you  shall  save  money"  first.  They  said  first, 
"Let  us  help  each  other."  Holyoake,  who  is  not 
suspected  of  being  over-religious,  said  squarely 
that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if  churches  would 
take  upon  themselves  the  business  of  buying  in 
common  for  the  worshippers.  I  believe  the 
Ruggles  Street  people  here  have  had  the  wit  to 
do  this  already.  And  this  is  what  Mr.  Little- 
field  proposes  at  Haverhill.  He  and  his  friends 
will  succeed  now,  according  to  me,  if  they  keep 

[58] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

this  eternal  principle  in  the  forefront  of  their 
plans.  Do  not  say,  "We  will  be  richer  if  we 
bear  each  other's  burdens,"  but  do  say,  "Our 
lives  will  be  larger,  the  State  will  be  more  pros- 
perous, civilization  will  go  forward,  and  the 
kingdom  of  God  will  come  if  we  can  contrive 
some  simple  way  in  which,  for  the  essentials  of 
physical  life,  men  shall  bear  each  other's  bur- 
dens." All  this  is  set  forth  at  length  in  Mr. 
Lloyd's  book,  in  Mr.  Cooke's  book,  and,  as  I 
have  modestly  intimated,  in  my  own  book, 
"How  They  Lived  at  Hampton."  There  is  a 
curious  story  about  this  book  that  I  will  tell,  even 
at  the  risk  of  the  suspicion  of  egotism.  But  I  and 
the  readers  of  this  column  are  a  sort  of  family 
group  who  can  say  some  things  to  each  other 
which  we  would  not  proclaim  to  mankind.  I 
wrote  "Hampton"  in  1888,  and  sent  it  to  the 
American  Sunday-School  Society  in  competition 
for  a  premium  which  they  offered. 

Another  man  got  the  premium.  So  I  pub- 
lished the  book  myself,  and  I  have  myself  been 
very  glad  I  did  so.  When  it  was  published, 
the  newspaper  press,  which  at  that  time  had  very 
few  people  connected  with  it  who  had  the  cour- 
age of  their  convictions,  was  very  much  afraid 
of  the  book.  They  did  not  know  what  it  meant, 
and  were  afraid  that  it  recommended  anarchy. 

[59] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


So  it  happened  that  the  book  was  never  recom- 
mended by  anybody  to  anybody  except  by  Mr. 
George  Holyoake,  who  honored  it  so  far  that  he 
reprinted  it  in  England.  In  America,  however, 
it  had  to  work  its  own  way.  It  has  been  a  very 
interesting  thing  to  me  to  observe  that  the  sale  of 
it  has  been  in  separate  copies,  as  one  workman 
after  another  heard  of  it  and  wrote  his  private 
letter  to  ask  for  it.  It  has  been  to  me  a  valuable 
illustration  of  the  indifference  which  the  public 
pays  to  what  are  called  the  literary  judgments  of 
the  press.  On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  an 
illustration  of  the  certainty  that,  in  the  long  run, 
the  people  who  want  that  "sort  of  thing"  will 
find  that  "sort  of  thing."  I  think  that  this  is 
one  of  the  wise  maxims  of  President  Lincoln. 

FIRE  AND  WATER. 

A  NEW  LAKE. 

AN  old-fashioned  traveller  who  thinks  he 
knows  his  own  country  well,  and  espe- 
cially his  own  county,  finds  himself  on 
.  a  comfortable  old-fashioned  railroad 
which  we  have  in  Massachusetts,  on  his  way  to 
his  Alma  Mater,  Amherst  College. 

He  had  just  laid  down  the  American  Journal, 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

which  he  had  read  to  the  24th  page,  and  he  says 
to  himself,  This  must  be  near  their  home,  and  he 
gets  his  handkerchief  ready  to  wave  it  as  they 
pass  Jabez  Hinds's  house.  Hinds  was  his  chum 
in  college.  He  always  does  wave  it  as  they  go 
by. 

"Thirty-seven  miles,  Clinton  Station,  forty 
miles,  Boylston,  here  we  are,"  he  says.  "Why 
no!  what  is  there?  What  in  thunder  is  that 
wall,  what  are  those  carts  digging?  Porter, 
what  has  become  of  West  Boylston?"  The 
porter  does  not  know.  The  brakeman  does  not 
know.  The  conductor  comes  along,  and  he  inti- 
mates that  old  Mr.  Bixby  is  a  fool  because  he 
does  not  know  that  the  Commonwealth  of  Mas- 
sachusetts happened  to  want  West  Boylston  and 
took  it. 

The  bones  of  the  dead  in  the  graveyard  were 
tenderly  removed  to  St.  John's  Cemetery.  The 
houses  were  moved  or  taken  down.  And  a 
lake  three  or  four  miles  long  by  two  or  three 
miles  wide  is  to  take  the  place  of  West  Boyls- 
ton. 

Simply,  a  million  people  of  Massachusetts, 
more  or  less,  wanted  more  water  to  drink,  and 
to  wash  their  carriages  and  to  flush  their  sewers. 
They  went  to  the  State  House  and  said  they 
wanted  it.  "All  right,"  said  the  Legislature. 

[61] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


And  as  soon  as  the  great  dam  is  finished,  say  next 
April,  the  water  which  those  million  people  need 
will  be  filling  up  the  Wachusett  Reservoir. 

Now,  I  might  go  to  any  swell  club  in  Boston, 
or  I  might  go  down  State  Street  and  stop  ten 
of  the  most  intelligent  men  in  the  town,  and  say 
to  them  that  within  three  years  the  State  has 
taken  the  property  of  a  thousand  men  for  the 
public  good  of  the  people  of  the  State.  I  might 
say  to  them,  "You  could  not  wash  your  faces  if 
the  State  did  not  do  such  things."  And  I  should 
find  that  not  one  man  in  the  ten  knows,  or  indeed 
cares,  that  a  town  has  been  swept  out  of  exist- 
ence that  he  might  wash  his  face. 

So  simply  and  easily  are  such  things  done  all 
the  time  when  there  is  a  public  necessity. 

Pray,  why  should  Mr.  Knickerbocker,  when  I 
meet  him  at  Sherry's,  or  Mr.  Girling,  when  I 
meet  him  at  the  Somerset  Club,  be  so  horrified, 
when  I  tell  him  that  the  State  of  Pennsylvania 
must  take  a  few  square  miles  of  coal  fields  and 
use  them  for  the  public  good?  He  is  living 
every  hour  of  his  life  in  a  system  which  depends 
on  such  use  of  such  power.  Why  does  he  call 
me  all  sorts  of  nicknames,  "Anarchist,"  "Social- 
ist," "Jacobin,"  and  the  rest,  because  I  propose 
to  do  on  a  small  scale  what  has  been  done  a 
thousand  times  on  a  larger  scale? 
[62] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

Who  made  the  Central  Park?  And  where  is 
the  power  that  made  Central  Park? 

Who  made  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  and 
where  is  the  power  that  took  a  strip  of  land  from 
Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg  to  make  it? 

And  why  is  not  a  coal  fire  as  necessary  as  a 
ride  from  the  Delaware  River  to  the  Ohio,  or 
a  wash-basin  full  of  water? 


HIS  MAJESTY  THE  PEOPLE. 

WHEN  this  monarch  takes  the  throne 
he  finds  that  he  has  some  jobs  on 
hand  which  selfish  monarchs  have 
neglected.     It    is    not   that  men 
have  not  thought  of  them.     But  they  have  not 
taken  them  to  heart  as  His  Majesty  the  People 
does. 

Four  thousand  years  ago  there  was  an  empe- 
ror in  Egypt  who  established  granaries  for  the 
people  by  which  in  time  of  famine  he  could  pro- 
vide for  them,  even  if  there  were  bad  crops  for 
many  years.  But  he  did  this  only  to  screw 
money  out  of  his  subjects. 

When  the  Roman  people  took  their  own  gov- 
ernment into  hand,  their  magistrates  had  wit 
enough  to  provide  the  great  storehouses  of  food 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


which  lifted  the  masses  of  men  wholly  above  the 
danger  of  bad  voyages  or  bad  harvests. 

The  same  thing  happened  here.  So  soon  as 
the  great  grain  States  found  the  dangers  of  the 
inherited  systems,  they  placed  their  great  grain 
elevators  directly  under  the  charge  of  the  State. 
The  constitutions  of  the  States  of  the  northern 
Mississippi  made  such  provision  for  the  eleva- 
tors, that  in  any  State  it  is  possible  for  the  people, 
whenever  the  people  needs,  to  provide  a  food 
supply  for  an  indefinite  future. 

His  Majesty  the  People  is  now  learning,  in  this 
city  and  in  all  the  leading  cities,  that  the  people 
must  not  live  in  the  hand-to-mouth  fashion  which 
has  so  utterly  broken  down. 

His  Majesty  must  do  with  his  fuel  what  for 
a  generation  he  has  done  with  the  national  treas- 
ury. 

Seventy-five  years  ago,  if  a  man  went  to  Uncle 
Sam's  head  servant  and  said,  "Mr.  Madison, 
you  owe  me  a  thousand  dollars,"  that  poor  beg- 
gar had  to  say,  "Well,  come  in  a  fortnight  and 
I  will  save  up  all  that  comes  in,  and  you  shall 
have  it."  This  is  what  my  coal  dealer  says  to 
me  to-day. 

But  now  Uncle  Sam  lays  by  in  his  treasury 
one  or  two  hundred  millions  of  gold,  more  if 
there  be  need,  so  that  a  poor  scrubbing  woman 

[64] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

in  the  Patent  Office  shall  be  paid  as  soon  as  her 
job  is  done. 

His  Majesty  the  People  must  take  that  lesson 
to  heart.  His  Majesty  will  not  leave  to  the  Big 
Bear,  or  the  Little  Bear,  or  the  Middle  Bear 
the  storage  of  his  fuel.  Exactly  as  Uncle  Sam 
has  now  saltpetre  in  store  which  would  carry 
him  through  ten  years  of  war,  His  Majesty  the 
People  will  have  coal  in  store  and  on  tap,  if  a 
railway  breaks  down,  or  a  harbor  freezes  up, 
or  a  gang  of  operatives  quarrel. 

The  same  common  sense  which  made  His 
Majesty  the  People  store  water  for  the  daily 
use  of  the  City  of  New  York  may  guide  His 
Majesty  to  keeping  in  store  for  them  a  twelve 
months'  supply  of  coal.  It  is  an  investment  quite 
as  safe  as  little  kegs  of  gold  are. 

OLD-FASHIONED  FUEL. 

GEORGE  STEPHENSON,  the  locomo- 
tive  Stephenson,   was   standing  with 
an    English    nobleman    one    Sunday 
morning  on  the  terrace  in  front  of  this 
gentleman's    palace.     A    train    of    cars    swept 
through  the  valley.     Stephenson  asked  the  other 
what  he  supposed  was  dragging  the  train. 
"Why,  one  of  your  engines,  of  course !" 

[65] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


"Oh,  yes,"  said  Stephenson,  "one  of  my  en- 
gines, of  course,  but  what  drives  the  engine?" 

"Why,  the  steam,  of  course;  the  steam  drives 
the  piston,  and  the  piston  turns  the  wheels." 

"Yes,  yes,  of  course,  and  what  makes  the 
steam?" 

"Does  not  the  fire  make  the  steam?"  said  the 
puzzled  listener. 

"Why,  of  course,  but  what  is  the  fire?  The 
fire  is  God's  own  sunlight  and  sunshine  as  He 
packed  it  away  a  hundred  thousand  years  ago  in 
the  ferns  and  mosses  and  brakes  and  trees  of 
Lancashire  morasses  so  that  it  might  be  unpacked 
to-day  and  boil  the  water  to  change  it  to  steam, 
to  drive  the  piston  which  turns  the  wheels,  so 
that  the  train  may  go." 

That  is,  in  fact,  one  way  in  which  the  good 
God  provides  us  all  to-day  with  our  daily  bread. 

For  others,  He  provides  it  to-day  ready  made. 
And  while  I  put  on  my  arctic  boots  and  my  fur 
gloves,  my  Cousin  Miranda  in  Jamaica  has  her 
tiny,  pretty  walking  shoes,  the  same  she  wore  at 
Newport,  and  is  carrying  her  sunshade,  for  fear 
she  should  be  burned.  She  has  her  sunshine  on 
tap,  and  it  is  fresh  brewed. 

At  the  same  moment  it  happens  that  the  State 
of  New  York,  from  a  droll  preference  for  canned 
sunshine,  spent  last  year  some  999,000,000  dol- 
[66] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

lars  in  its  infirmaries,  and  hospitals,  and  asylums 
of  twenty  different  names,  when  in  Florida  and 
Texas  the  glorious  sun  in  to-day's  heat  is  warm- 
ing the  rich  people  who  choose  to  go  so  far  and 
meet  him.  There  are  in  the  State  "institutions" 
thousands  of  men,  women,  and  children  who 
will  be  shut  up  indoors  for  the  next  five  months 
who  would  be  better  out-of-doors,  would  be  hap- 
pier out-of-doors,  would  get  well  if  they  were 
out-of-doors.  And  five  dollars  apiece  for  each 
would  carry  each  one  of  those  men,  or  women, 
or  children  there,  and  when  they  were  there,  they 
could  rake  in  their  own  gardens,  and  see  their 
own  strawberries  grow,  and  send  home  fresh 
flowers  to  their  cousins  in  flat  number  39  in  West 
Two  Thousand  and  Seventh  Street. 

Nothing  but  a  queer  superstition  in  favor  of 
the  sunshine  which  is  packed  away  in  coal,  for- 
bids our  establishing  our  public  institutions  where 
the  good  God  is  ready  to  warm  them,  and  where 
their  inmates  can  become  outmates  by  living 
in  the  open  air.  It  is  probably  too  late  this  year 
to  set  on  foot  the  transfer  of  persons  of  delicate 
lungs  from  the  public  infirmaries,  where  they 
will  die  this  winter,  to  an  open  air  infirmary  at 
the  South,  where  they  would  get  well.  But  it 
is  not  too  late  to  get  on  foot  our  measures  for 
the  future. 

[67] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


BETTER  AND  BETTER. 

THE  general  enthusiasm  with  which  the 
President's  plan  for  the  coal  difficul- 
ties has  been  met  goes  a  great  way  in 
insuring  the  success  of  the  measure 
proposed.     Even  better  than  this,  it  gives  to  the 
country  at  large  and  to  all  persons  interested  in 
the  study  of  governrnent  a  new  illustration  of  the 
fitness  of  our  Constitution  to  meet  exigencies  as 
they  arise.     It  is  an  illustration  of  what  has  be- 
come fairly  an  American  proverb,  the  important 
truth  that  "some  things  may  be  done  as  well  as 
others." 

The  Constitution  has  been  pronounced  by 
high  authority  to  be  the  most  remarkable  work 
ever  struck  off  by  any  company  of  men  in  so 
short  a  time.  It  is  remarkable,  not  only  for 
what  it  does  say,  but  for  what  it  does  not  say. 
It  is  remarkable  for  the  American  People,  be- 
cause for  them  it  has  given  some  new  definitions 
for  the  discussion  of  the  science  of  government. 
Every  American  now  knows  what  is  meant  when 
he  speaks  of  national  issues  and  of  national  leg- 
islation, and  of  what  is  meant  when  he  speaks  of 
local  administration  and  local  issues.  There 
are  not  ten  men  in  Europe  who  have  any  defini- 
[68] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

tions  of  the  corresponding  words  which  ap- 
proach the  accuracy  of  the  definitions  given  for 
our  half  the  continent  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  That  is  to  say,  the  Constitution 
provides  for  the  year  1902  as  well  as  it  provides 
for  the  year  1 802.  Not  in  words.  No !  If  you 
please,  the  men  who  made  the  Constitution  did 
not  know  enough,  nor  did  they  foresee  with  ac- 
curacy enough  to  write  down  in  words  systems 
which  would  meet  the  exigencies  of  to-day.  Had 
there  arisen  in  the  convention  any  man  who 
would  say,  "I  have  been  trying  an  experiment 
with  a  stone  which  looks  like  coal,  but  does  not 
seem  to  be  coal;  and  the  result  of  my  experiment 
is  that  I  think  in  1903  the  seaboard  States  will 
depend  upon  this  hard  black  stone,  which  does 
not  seem  to  be  coal,  for  fuel,  and  I  should  like 
arrangements  made  in  the  Constitution  which 
will  enable  all  those  States  to  obtain  a  supply  of 
this  mineral  at  a  fair  price.  I  propose  that  the 
Constitution  shall  enforce  measures  which  will 
prevent  greediness  or  selfishness,  or  any  other 
device  of  Satan,  from  hindering  such  provision," 
— if  any  man  had  made  this  proposal,  I  think  he 
would  have  been  set  down  as  a  crazy  man,  and 
Dr.  Rush  would  have  been  sent  for  to  take  him 
in  charge.  No  such  prophet  appeared.  It  was 
not  necessary  to  send  any  one  to  Bedlam,  and  the 

[69] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


Constitution  does  not  mention  the  word  "coal" 
or  "fuel"  or  "mines." 

All  the  same  it  proves  that  the  President  of 
the  United  States  is  able  to  speak  the  word 
"peace,"  and  his  word  is  heard.  More  power- 
ful than  a  king,  more  powerful  than  parties,  with 
a  language  which  could  not  have  been  foreor- 
dained and  with  a  power  which  could  not  be 
grounded  in  words,  the  President  of  the  United 
States  meets  the  great  exigency. 

Such  success  as  this  ought  to  shut  the  mouths 
forever  of  all  literalists,  of  all  people  who  wish 
to  carve  this  or  that  in  letters  graven  in  stone  or 
in  bronze.  It  is  better  that  some  things  should 
not  be  written  down  than  that  they  should  be. 
It  is  as  true  as  it  ever  was  that  the  letter  of  the 
instrument  kills,  and  that  only  the  spirit  gives 
life.  Such  a  success,  again,  gives  warrant  to 
believe  that  the  nation  is  not  endangered  by  the 
various  steps  which  make  it  smaller  and  smaller 
by  every  year. 

But  little  more  than  a  century  ago  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  met  once  a  quarter 
for  more  than  two  years,  and  no  case  was  brought 
before  it  for  decision.  The  court  which  was  to 
hear  all  cases  between  State  and  State,  which  was 
to  hear  appeals  in  all  cases  between  the  citizen 
of  one  State  and  the  citizen  of  another, 

[70] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

was  not  called  upon  for  such  action  in  any 
one  of  the  first  nine  of  its  quarterly  sessions. 
So  little  was  the  communication  between 
Massachusetts  and  Georgia  or  between  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  that  their  interstate 
relations  did  not  command  the  attention  of 
the  Supreme  Court.  To-day  a  merchant  from 
Maine  goes  through  a  dozen  States  or  more 
on  his  way  to  New  Orleans,  transacts  his  busi- 
ness there,  and  is  back  at  his  home  before  the 
week  has  closed.  Or,  if  he  be  more  hardly 
pressed,  he  sends  word  of  his  need  to  his  New 
Orleans  correspondent,  and  receives  an  answer 
before  half  an  hour  has  expired.  Or  a  citizen 
of  New  York  finds  that  the  winter  is  going  to  be 
cold,  and  he  takes  the  invalid  members  of  his 
family  to  Southern  Florida,  leaves  them  there, 
and  is  back  in  his  office  before  his  neighbors 
know  that  he  has  been  away. 

At  the  first  impression  it  would  seem  that  the 
instrument  of  union  which  was  made  for  thirteen 
States  as  far  parted  as  were  the  States  in  1787 
could  not  be  adapted  to  a  compact  little  nation, 
where  from  one  corner  to  another  the  citizens 
can  talk  with  each  other  or  can  visit  each  other 
as  neighbors,  where  they  have  the  duties,  the 
privileges,  and  the  dangers  of  neighborhood  life. 
May  it  not  happen,  perhaps,  that  with  greater 


WE,   THE  PEOPLE'' 


intimacy  there  shall  be  more  causes  of  dissension, 
and  that  what  was  possible  in  the  way  of  union 
where  distances  were  so  great  may  prove  to  be 
impossible  when  time  and  space  are  annihilated? 
No!  Whatever  the  theorists  might  guess,  it 
proves,  in  fact,  that  the  nearer  men  are  to  each 
other,  and  the  more  necessary  they  are  to  each 
other,  the  more  certain  is  it  that  their  union  will 
hold  if  it  is  a  union  meant  for  the  common  ad- 
vance and  for  the  general  welfare.  The  victory 
in  this  matter  of  coal  makes  it  easier  to  promise 
success  in  other  national  matters  of  which  the 
fathers  in  1787  did  not  dream — the  preservation 
of  the  national  forests,  the  irrigation  of  the  na- 
tional deserts,  the  prevention  of  contagious  dis- 
ease. Or,  to  speak  in  general,  the  welfare  of  all 
the  people  is  easier  and  more  certain  if  the  nation 
succeeds  in  establishing  peace  where  there  has 
been  war,  in  the  regions  between  the  Susquehanna 
and  the  Delaware. 

THE  PRESIDENT'S  ARBITRATION. 

AS  the  November  number  of  the  Record 
goes  to  press,   President   Roosevelt's 
great  court  of  arbitration  has  opened 
its  sessions  in  the  city  of  Washington. 
The  court  has  white  paper  to  write  upon,  and 
although  it  is  established  by  no  statute,  it  is  a 

[72] ' 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

great  moral  power.  From  its  decisions  there 
may  well  arise  more  humane  and  civilized  ar- 
rangements for  daily  duty  in  the  mines,  a  more 
humane  and  intelligent  direction  of  the  legisla- 
tion of  Pennsylvania  of  the  duties  of  property 
holders,  a  more  humane  and  intelligent  direction 
of  the  distribution  of  fuel  among  the  people  on 
the  Atlantic  side  of  the  Appalachian  mountains. 
It  is  by  no  accident  that  in  the  legislation  of 
hundreds  of  years  the  product  of  mines  has  been 
regarded  in  all  civilized  nations  as  under  the 
especial  control  of  the  State.  The  arrangements, 
even  of  feudal  nations,  with  all  their  folly  and 
stupidity,  have  been  made  in  the  understanding 
that  the  State  has  a  certain  duty  with  regard  to 
the  products  of  mines,  which  it  does  not  assume 
in  the  distribution  of  the  annual  products  of  the 
farm.  There  has,  therefore,  never  been  any 
opportunity  so  good  as  this  for  an  American 
State  to  establish  the  principles  of  co-operation 
between  laborers  and  capitalists  as  that  which 
presents  itself  now  in  the  reorganization  of  the 
mining  region,  so  small  in  comparison,  of  the  up- 
lands between  the  Delaware  and  the  Susquehan- 
na.  Co-operative  effort  is  by  no  means  unknown 
in  America.  In  our  New  England  life  it  was  a 
matter  of  common  life  and  common  law,  from 
the  beginning,  that  the  freeholders  of  the  town 

[73] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


turn  out  in  person  with  their  oxen  and  horses 
and  spades  and  pickaxes,  to  work  upon  the  roads 
of  the  town.  It  was  a  matter  of  course  from  the 
beginning  that  the  taxes  of  the  town  supplied 
the  schoolhouse,  as  the  people  of  the  town  built 
the  roads.  From  the  very  beginning,  it  was 
taken  as  a  matter  of  course  that  the  light-houses 
of  the  State  should  be  paid  for  by  the  State ;  and 
as  soon  as  the  State  made  itself  a  part  of  the 
nation,  the  nation  assumed  the  oversight  of  the 
whole  establishment  for  lighthouses,  for  buoys 
and  of  lightships  and  all  conveniences  for  com- 
merce. No  ship  of  the  line  so  great  and  no 
fisherman  so  insignificant  that  admiral  or  fisher- 
man should  pay  a  penny  to  Massachusetts  Bay, 
or  to  the  United  States  when  the  United  States 
came  into  existence,  as  a  fee  for  a  light-house 
which  was  established  for  the  public  good. 

In  all  matters  where  all  are  concerned,  the 
common  law  of  this  nation  requires  that  all  shall 
live  for  each  and  each  for  all.  The  methods  of 
co-operation  have  been  tried  in  the  last  century 
in  the  different  Christian  nations  of  the  world 
with  varying  success.  Co-operative  manufac- 
ture has  attained  its  best  results  in  France,  where 
the  great  co-operative  establishment  at  Guise  is 
perhaps  one  of  the  largest  in  the  world.  A  better 
illustration,  however,  perhaps,  is  that  at  Le  Claire, 

[74] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

in  Illinois,  where  the  great  co-operative  company 
instituted  by  Mr.  Nelson  carries  on  its  manufac- 
ture. I  should  say  that  our  greatest  success  in 
America  as  yet  is  not  so  much  in  co-operative 
manufacture  as  it  is  in  co-operative  insurance, 
and  in  the  admirable  and  inestimable  establish- 
ments in  the  large  cities,  where  men  co-operate 
for  the  building  of  their  own  houses.  In  Eng- 
land co-operation  in  trade — so  that  the  work- 
man is  partner  in  the  establishment  which  sells 
him  his  cloth,  his  food  and  his  fuel — has  been 
singularly  successful. 

The  gentlemen  who  are  sitting  in  the  high 
tribunal  created  by  President  Roosevelt's  suc- 
cess have  it  in  their  power  to  show  how  the  true 
principles  of  co-operation  can  be  applied  to  the 
mining  of  coal.  It  will  require  all  the  practical 
knowledge  of  experts  in  mining  to  arrange  the 
detail  of  this  system.  But  the  principles  of  it 
have  been  well  laid  down  by  George  Holyoake 
in  England,  by  Mr.  William  B.  Weeden  in 
Providence  and  by  Mr.  Henry  D.  Lloyd  of  Chi- 
cago. Very  briefly  stated,  they  are  these : 

i.  Capital  as  capital  has  a  right  to  a  certain 
annual  interest,  to  be  paid  to  those  who  do  not 
give  any  personal  attention  to  the  direction  of 
the  industry,  but  who  do  furnish  the  tools  of 
operation,  the  machinery  of  what  is  generally 

[75] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


called  the  "plant."  He  who  does  this  may  go  to 
the  Falkland  Islands  or  to  the  Antarctic  conti- 
nent, and  may  reside  there  in  a  convent  for  ten 
years,  and  still  he  is  entitled  to  a  certain  regular 
interest  on  the  capital  with  which  he  sets  forward 
and  maintains  the  enterprise. 

2.  The  man  of  affairs,  the  entrepreneur,  the 
ingenious  supervisor  of  methods  and  manager 
of  the  concern,  has  his  share  in  the  profit  of  the 
enterprise  and  is  entitled  to  have  it  paid  him 
on  a  regular  system. 

3.  The  intelligent  workman,  who  brings  his 
skill  to  the  control  of  the  matter,  and  the  laborer, 
who  is  a  different  person,  intelligent,  or  not  intel- 
ligent, who  brings  his  muscle,  his  weight,  the 
machinery  of  his  fingers  and  such  intelligence  as 
he  can  contribute  to  the  daily  product,  all  these 
are  entitled  to  their  share  in  the  profits,  and  they 
must  bear  their  share  in  the  failures. 

A  true  system  of  adjustment  involves  an  ar- 
rangement by  which  each  of  those  parties  shall 
receive  his  share  of  the  results  of  the  chief  enter- 
prise. It  is  difficult,  but  it  is  not  impossible,  to 
arrange  a  system  in  which  this  shall  be  brought 
about. 

The  State  of  Pennsylvania,  under  right  of 
eminent  domain,  can  assume  the  duty  of  carrying 
into  effect  any  system  which  the  arbitration 

[76] 


CO-OPERATION  AND  COAL 

board  shall  suggest.  It  is  said  of  kings  that 
their  wishes  are  commands.  The  wishes  of  this 
arbitration  board  will  be  a  command  to  the 
Legislature  of  Pennsylvania.  It  will  not  be  asked 
to  do  anything  remarkable,  when  it  is  command- 
ed to  purchase  some  or  all  the  anthracite  coal 
lands  of  the  top  highlands  between  the  Susque- 
hanna  and  the  Delaware.  It  assumed  a  much 
greater  power  when,  in  another  generation,  it 
gave  a  strip  of  land  to  what  is  now  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad  Company,  between  Philadelphia 
and  Virginia.  It  assumed  far  greater  responsi- 
bilities when  it  instructed  the  city  of  Philadel- 
phia to  build  the  waterworks  of  the  Schuylkill. 
If  it  should  flinch,  if  it  should  refuse,  there  is 
another  political  entity,  stronger  than  the  State 
of  Pennsylvania.  Its  name  is  the  United  States. 
When  it  is  necessary,  it  takes  what  the  national 
need  requires,  from  the  State  as  from  the  individ- 
ual; and  if  it  needs  a  rock  for  a  light-house,  it 
takes  that  rock.  If  it  needs  a  railway  from  St. 
Louis  to  San  Francisco,  it  takes  the  land  for  that 
railway.  If  it  need,  for  its  navy,  for  its  internal 
commerce  or  for  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
to  take  the  coal  lands  of  Pennsylvania,  it  can 
take  them. 

And  it  will  take  them,  unless  the  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania assumes  the  duty  which  is  properly  its 
own.  [  77  1 


Women's   Clubs 


MRS.  STANTON. 

THE  death  of  Mrs.  Stanton  at  a  ripe  old 
age  makes  men  look  back  in  spite  of 
themselves  and  inquire  how  much  has 
been  gained  in  the  proclamation  of 
the  rights  of  women  in  which  she  has  been  so 
loyal  to  her  own  sex.  It  is  a  satisfaction  to  be 
able  to  say,  that  in  most  of  the  States  the  legis- 
lation has  been  largely  improved  which  relates 
to  the  position  of  women  before  the  courts,  and 
that  their  property  rights  are  much  more  like 
those  of  men  than  they  were  at  the  period  of 
Mrs.  Stanton's  birth.  Mrs.  Stanton  has  to  be 
fairly  credited  with  a  very  considerable  share  in 
the  awakening  of  public  attention  to  the  subjects 
involved.  Meanwhile,  the  whole  of  the  social 
order  of  the  time  improves  and  women  have 
had  their  share  in  the  improvement,  as  men  have 
had.  I  like  to  say  in  passing  that  people  who 
have  had  to  do  with  Spanish  legislation  in  Louis- 
iana, in  Texas,  in  New  Mexico,  and  in  Califor- 

[78] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


nia,  have  learned  that  the  Spanish  laws  on  such 
subjects  were,  generally,  more  simple  than  ours. 
Mrs.  Stanton  would  have  said  that  women  are 
more  sure  of  their  public  rights  under  the  customs 
and  laws  in  New  Mexico  than  they  are  in  South 
Carolina.  And  whoever  wants  to  study  the  sub- 
ject had  better  make  a  pretty  careful  examination 
of  the  law  of  Texas,  as  it  exists  at  this  moment, 
by  way  of  finding  out  what  he  had  better  "do 
about  it." 

Meanwhile,  the  women  have  many  other  ad- 
vantages now  such  as  a  girl  born  in  1815  did 
not  have.  In  some  of  the  earlier  American 
story  books,  or  novels  of  the  beginning  of  the 
century,  the  Moravian  school  at  Bethlehem  is 
spoken  of  as  the  only  school  in  the  country  where 
young  girls  could  receive  what  they  now  call  the 
higher  education.  And  anybody  who  will  see 
what  the  young  girl  studied  at  Bethlehem  will  be 
amused  at  the  contrast  to  the  studies  at  Vassar 
College,  or  Aurora,  or  the  high  schools  in  New 
York  to-day.  It  must  be  confessed,  however, 
that  a  good  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  women 
in  this  business  have  mistaken  their  "leading,"  as 
our  Quaker  friends  say. 

There  has  been  constantly  a  statement  that 
higher  education  of  women  is  neglected  in  this 
country,  while  the  higher  education  of  men  is 

[79] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


cared  for.  This  was  true  enough  if  people  only 
chose  to  speak  of  the  collegiate  education  of  the 
most  expensive  and  rare  kind.  In  1850,  for  in- 
stance, a  few  thousand  men  graduated  at  the 
colleges  of  America,  and  no  women  did.  But 
this  whipped  syllabub  at  the  top  of  the  education- 
al pyramid  was  not  the  part  of  the  repast  which 
most  people  fed  upon.  In  1850,  in  1870,  and  in 
1900  more  young  women  than  young  men  went 
beyond  the  mere  education  for  the  three  R's — 
reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic.  For  to  this 
hour,  the  average  American  boy  is  withdrawn 
from  school  at  an  earlier  age  than  the  average 
American  girl.  We  must  not  mislead  ourselves 
by  taking  figures  from  New  York  or  Chicago. 
Taking  the  country  at  large,  the  girl  in  a 
well-to-do  family  remains  at  school  until  she  is 
sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of  age,  on  the  average. 
A  boy,  excepting  perhaps  for  a  few  weeks  in  the 
winter  school,  is  withdrawn  from  school  and  goes 
to  work  at  thirteen,  fourteen,  or  fifteen.  In  my 
own  city  of  Boston,  the  average  boy  leaves 
school  never  to  enter  it  again  after  he  is  fourteen 
years  old. 

What  follows  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  of 
American  families,  where  there  is  money  enough 
for  the  advanced  education  of  their  children  is, 
that  the  girls,  say  in  a  well-to-do  country  town, 

[so] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


learn  some  little  rudiments  of  a  foreign  language, 
that  they  have  some  education  in  music,  in  art, 
that  they  go  through  "high  school  studies," 
so  called.  If  you  go  to  the  annual  commence- 
ments of  the  high  school  in  any  one  of  our  larger 
towns,  you  will  find  that  three-quarters  of  the 
graduating  class  are  young  women  of  sixteen, 
seventeen,  or  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  only  one- 
quarter  young  men  of  the  same  age.  Now,  it  is 
very  likely  to  happen  under  such  conditions  of 
school  training  that  the  boy  forms  his  associa- 
tions with  other  boys  who  left  school  with  him, 
that  he  tries  the  rather  dangerous  experiments 
of  the  lurking-places  of  the  village  in  the  even- 
ing. As  a  friend  of  mine  writes  me,  he  studies 
life  by  throwing  lager  beer  corks  across  the  fo- 
rum of  the  village  store.  His  sister,  a  little 
older,  or  a  little  younger,  than  he,  is  at  the  same 
moment  attending  the  Browning  Club  or  the 
Cecilia  or  the  something  else,  with  a  dozen  of 
her  young  lady  friends,  while  the  boy  is  wishing 
he  were  old  enough  to  be  chosen  into  the  fire 
company.  Now,  this  is  not  an  advantage,  either 
to  the  boy  or  to  the  girl.  It  is  a  disadvantage 
to  both  of  them.  In  my  judgment,  Mrs.  Stanton 
and  her  friends  would  have  done  more  service  to 
young  men  and  to  young  women  by  trying  to  keep 
the  education  of  each  sex  on  the  same  plane  as 
[81] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


that  of  the  other.  Nothing  was  gained  when 
the  girls  were  taught  "French  and  philosophy" 
if,  at  the  same  time,  the  boys  took  the  notion 
that  the  society  which  their  own  sisters  were  fond 
of  was  not  in  every  sort  the  society  for  them. 

WOMEN'S  CLUBS. 

THE  establishment  of  thousands  of  wom- 
en's clubs  in  all  parts  of  the  nation 
has  worked  and  is  working  a  great 
improvement  in  social  activities.  Nat- 
urally the  leaders  lead  in  such  enterprises.     In 
the  long  run  that  is  a  law  of  human  society. 

All  the  same,  sometimes  a  promising  club 
goes  to  the  wall,  or,  as  our  excellent  English 
friends  say,  goes  to  the  bow-wows.  It  prom- 
ises well  and  it  does  nothing  else  well.  It  has  a 
president,  who  has  good  clothes.  It  has  two 
vice-presidents,  one  of  whom  lives  in  the  north 
part  of  town  and  one  in  the  south.  That  is  all 
right.  It  has  a  recording  secretary  and  a  corre- 
sponding secretary,  and  a  treasurer  and  two  audi- 
tors. That  is  all  right.  It  has  a  constitution  which 
can  be  amended  on  a  motion  made  by  three  mem- 
bers at  a  meeting  called  for  that  special  purpose. 
No  harm  in  that.  But  alas,  and  alas,  the  inter- 
est languishes  after  a  year  or  two!  The  ladies 

[82] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


do  not  propose  new  members.  And  at  last  there 
is  no  money  in  the  treasury,  and  after  trying  a 
"course  of  lectures"  to  raise  money  the  club  dies 
and  makes  no  sign. 

And  yet  dear  Mrs.  Judge  Mansfield,  writing 
from  that  unknown  place  in  North  Dakota, 
where  they  went  to  live  when  her  husband  was 
appointed  to  be  district  judge  for  Northwest 
America,  writes  to  us  to  say  that  they  have  an 
excellent  club  in  New  Padua,  and  to  ask  why 
she  does  not  hear  from  ours. 

So  it  is  as  well  for  the  American  Journal  to 
reveal  a  secret  and  make  it  an  open  secret. 

The  club  which  failed,  failed  because  it  was 
good  for  nothing.  Nothing  selfish  succeeds  in 
this  world.  Poor  Mr.  Tenmillions  who  died 
the  other  day  did  not  succeed,  because  he  did 
nothing  to  help  anybody  else. 

The  rule  of  life  is  that  which  was  laid  down 
by  the  musketeers  in  the  beginning  of  Dumas's 
novel,  "All  for  each  and  each  for  all."  Now, 
if  you  think  of  it,  a  club  which  exists  simply  for 
the  amusement  and  satisfaction  of  its  members 
is  just  as  selfish  as  Mr.  Tenmillions  was. 

The  Blue  Butterfly  Club  of  Cranberry  Centre 
existed  simply  for  the  amusement  of  its  mem- 
bers, or  for  the  instruction  of  its  members,  and 
for  the  advancing  its  members  in  the  social  order 

[83] 


WE,   THE  PEOPLE* 


of  Cranberry  Centre,  and  therefore  it  went  to 
the  bad.  It  ought  to  have  gone  to  the  bad ;  the 
laws  of  the  universe  compelled  it  to  go  to  the 
bad ;  and  so  I  am  glad  to  say  that  the  Blue  But- 
terfly Club  does  not  exist  any  longer. 

Sometimes  it  takes  a  club  ten  years  to  die. 
That  is,  when  at  the  outset  there  was  a  good, 
large  subscription  and  the  best  people  of  the 
town  went  in,  and  they  always  had  a  good  bal- 
ance in  the  treasury  and  the  officers  could  get 
well  paid  for  a  few  years. 

But  if  it  existed  only  for  the  officers,  only  for 
the  members,  it  could  not  live — it  could  not  live 
any  more  than  a  baby  could  live  at  the  bottom 
of  the  ocean;  it  dies  because  it  ought  to  die. 

There  is  no  community  between  Tiajuana  on 
the  southwest  and  northeast  Norumbega,  which 
is  47  degrees  north  latitude,  where  there  is  not 
something  which  a  woman's  club  can  do  for  the 
improvement  or  advantage  of  people  outside  the 
women  themselves. 

In  practice,  I  observe  that  it  is  a  good  thing 
to  have  such  a  club  in  close  connection  with  the 
almshouse  of  the  county.  It  is  a  good  thing  for 
such  a  club  to  be  well  acquainted  with  the  sani- 
tary board  and  know  where  the  water  and  the 
drainage  are  bad. 

It  is  a  good  thing  for  such  a  club  to  welcome 

[84] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


the  Armenian  and  the  Bohemian  and  the  Cappa- 
docian  and  the  Dalecarlian  as  they  arrive  from 
the  different  parts  of  the  world;  and  unless  a 
woman's  club  has  its  eyes  opened  to  see  outside 
its  immediate  company,  to  whom  it  can  be  of  use, 
that  club  is  sure  to  die.  What  is  more,  it  is  an 
excellent  thing  that  it  should  die. 

WHAT  DO  THE  GIRLS  NEED? 

THIS  is  not  what  the  leaders  among  them 
ask    for.     Twenty    years    ago    Mrs. 
Stanton  and  her  friends  were  begging 
that  they  might  go  to  the  men's  col- 
leges.    "Do  you  really  mean  that  you  want  to 
study  the  integral  calculus  and  analyze  the  hydro- 
protoxide  of  albumenal  protoplasm?"     And  the 
leaders  and  their  friends  said,  "That  is  just  what 
we  want." 

"Go  ahead,"  said  a  good-natured  world,  and 
many  colleges  opened  the  way  for  them.  At  the 
same  time,  the  same  colleges  introduced  what 
is  called  the  elective  system.  This  means 
that  if  you  want  to  study  the  curve  of  the 
inner  satellite  which  has  just  been  discovered 
at  Breslau  as  eclipsed  once  in  four  years  and 
a  half  by  the  planet  Neptune,  you  may 
study  that.  Or  if  you  want  to  study  the 

[85] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


influence  of  the  Digamma  as  exhibited  on  the 
tombstones  at  a  village  on  Athos,  you  may  study 
that.  Or  if  you  want  to  attend  a  course  of 
lectures  on  Balzac's  novels  you  may  attend 
them. 

Well,  some  of  the  bona  fide  women's  colleges 
held  bravely  to  their  business.  They  made  the 
girls  pass  just  such  an  examination  as  Yale  Uni- 
versity and  Columbia  College  require  for  boys. 
They  have  their  reward.  That  is,  they  have  a 
set  of  hard-working  women  named  in  their  cata- 
logues, who  are  willing  to  work  and  to  work 
hard. 

But  the  temptation  on  some  of  the  colleges 
was  too  strong  for  them  to  hold  to  this  stiff  rule. 
If  a  girl  could  read  a  little  French  and  knew 
what  the  rule  of  three  meant,  she  could  slip  in. 
What  follows  is,  that  the  leaders  in  such  schools 
have  a  set  of  nice,  pretty  girls  who  elect  "Pro- 
fessor Doubleday's  lectures  on  Balzac,"  or  "Dr. 
Prettyman's  course  on  the  Elizabethan  plays," 
or  "Mr.  Wanderjahre's  excavations  in  Vallam- 
brosa."  Indeed,  the  girls  go  to  the  college 
much  as  a  boy  does  who  goes  to  play  base- 
ball. She  goes  "to  have  a  good  time,"  and  she 
has  it. 

What  American  women  tell  me  they  want  is 
to  learn  how  to  live  and  be  of  use  to  the  people 

[86] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


around  them.  And  one  thing  they  think  they 
need,  and  which  nobody  teaches  them,  is  how  to 
take  care  of  their  gardens,  their  trees,  their 
orchards,  their  wood  lots.  There  is  not,  I  be- 
lieve, a  college  or  a  seminary,  outside  a  few 
agricultural  schools  proper,  in  which  a  woman 
can  be  taught  how  to  bud  a  peach-tree,  or  how 
to  thin  out  a  bit  of  wood-land.  She  can  be  taught 
rhetoric;  yes.  She  can  be  taught  what  was  the 
mistake  when  people  used  syllogisms;  yes.  But 
she  cannot  learn  what  corn  she  shall  buy  when 
she  goes  to  the  market  town.  I  have  known 
plenty  of  high  schools  where  the  scholars  could 
tell  what  was  the  value  in  English  currency  of 
four  hundred  and  twenty-nine  quarters  of  barley. 
They  knew  that,  because  the  sums  in  the  book 
were  based  on  such  questions.  And  yet  if  I  car- 
ried into  the  school  a  handful  of  oats  and  a  hand- 
ful of  barley,  not  one  girl  in  a  hundred  would 
know  which  was  which. 

The  girls  and  the  women  are  as  practical  as 
the  men  and  the  boys.  They  want  to  be  of  use, 
and  the  college  which  wants  to  train  its  pupils 
for  really  practical  life  will  teach  American 
girls  to  live  as  Americans.  For  nineteen  out  of 
twenty  of  them  this  life  is  a  life  where  they  are 
interested  in  the  growth  of  flowers,  fruit,  har- 
vests, and  forests.  They  are  more  interested  in 

[87] 


THE  PEOPLE" 


it  than  they  are  in  quaternions  or  in  the  drama- 
tists of  Queen  Elizabeth's  time.  And  it  is  quite 
time  for  the  great  women's  colleges  to  provide 
themselves  and  their  pupils  for  such  necessities. 

OPEN-AIR  LIFE  FOR  WOMEN. 

OF  eighty  million  people  in  the  United 
States,  three  and  a  half  million  live 
in  Greater  New  York.     Two  million 
live  in  Chicago;  and  five  million  more, 
"be  the  same  more  or  less,"  as  the  old  deeds  say, 
live  in  the  smaller  cities — Philadelphia,  Boston, 
Washington,  and  the  rest. 

So  we  have  a  wail  every  three  months  from 
somebody  that,  alas  and  alas !  a  quarter  part  of 
the  people  in  America  live  in  cities,  and  some- 
body reminds  us  that  a  hundred  years  ago  Jeffer- 
son said  that  "great  cities  are  great  sores."  And 
then  the  wailers  and  weepers  and  people  in  gen- 
eral who  like  to  show  that  the  world  of  America 
is  going  to  the  dogs,  shed  tears  on  paper  and  say 
they  do  not  know  what  to  do  about  it. 

Now,  in  this  matter  of  open-air  life  and  city 
life  which  the  rough  statistics  represent  to  the 
grumblers,  it  is  to  be  recollected  always  that  "you 
can  prove  anything  by  statistics  except  the 
truth." 

[88] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


In  this  case,  if  you  winnow  out  the  real  truth 
from  the  figures,  you  find  that  while  about 
seven  million  people  live  in  the  three  largest 
"cities,"  another  seven  million  live  in  the  "cities" 
which  have  less  than  a  hundred  thousand  people. 
And  we  find  that  these  "cities"  are  so  large  that 
very  likely  you  can  find  huckleberries  outside  your 
window.  One  of  our  Massachusetts  cities  reports 
thirty-seven  thousand  acres  for  four  thousand 
families.  Really,  if  I  had  a  garden  spot  of 
nine  acres  for  the  eight  people  in  my  family  I 
should  not  feel  as  if  we  were  dying  of  asphyxia- 
tion. 

At  Hampton  they  have  proved  that  on  a  four- 
acre  farm  of  average  land  a  family  can  support 
itself;  I  mean  that,  with  the  infinite  help  of  the 
good  God,  they  can  create  the  food  they  need 
for  a  year.  So  that  in  this  "city"  of  thirty 
thousand  acres  every  family  might  support  itself 
on  the  farm,  and  the  boys  could  have  five  acres 
to  play  base-ball  in. 

All  this  is  necessary  to  say  to  get  the  grumblers 
out  of  the  way. 

The  truth  is  that  we  are  still,  and  shall  always 
be,  an  open-air  people.  And  in  this  matter  of 
what  the  women  want,  wish,  and  will  have,  in 
their  college  training,  education  of  open-air  life 
comes  in  as  first  of  all. 

[89] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


It  is  no  sort  of  answer  to  say  that  there  is  a 
botanical  professor  in  the  college  and  that  he 
teaches  the  girls  the  difference  between  a  bulb 
and  a  root,  or  between  an  exogenous  tree  and  an 
endogenous  tree,  or  between  a  stamen  and  a 
pistil.  The  American  girl  and  the  American 
women  have  something  to  do  about  it.  And  what 
they  mean  is  to  do  something  about  it.  What 
they  need  and  what  they  must  have  in  college, 
if  they  go  to  college,  is  so  much  experimental 
ground  that  they  can  see  the  simple  processes 
of  life  and  duty  in  the  open  air.  A  woman  may 
not  have  to  drive  a  yoke  of  oxen,  but  the  better 
part  of  American  women  ought  to  know  the  dif- 
ference between  a  Jersey  cow  and  a  Holstein. 
It  is  not  enough  to  take  care  of  her  winter  garden 
in  the  house,  though  that  is  not  a  bad  thing,  but 
she  ought  to  know  how  to  advise  in  practice 
about  the  work  of  the  field  or  the  forest  and  at 
the  very  least  to  learn  how  she  can  learn. 

I  hope  my  good  friends  of  the  women's  clubs 
do  not  think  we  give  them  too  much  advice,  I 
hope  they  do  not  say  we  had  better  mind  our  own 
business.  Their  business  is  our  business.  They 
have  a  great  deal  to  do  in  lifting  up  the  social 
order  of  this  nation;  they  have  more  to  do  with 
it  than  most  of  them  seem  to  know. 

One  of  the  very  pieces  of  business  which  they 

[90] 


WOMEN'S  CLUBS 


have  in  hand  is  to  compel  the  State  Boards  of 
Education  and  the  trustees  of  colleges  to  appoint 
practical  teachers  in  the  arts  of  open-air  life.  And 
besides  appointing  teachers,  these  boards  must 
equip  the  colleges  for  such  lines  of  education. 


[90 


The    New   Century 

HALF  A  MILLION  DOLLARS. 

**A    T^ES,"   said   Dr.   Primrose,   "I   know 
V/         very  well  what  I  should  do  with 
-*-         half  a  million  dollars,  or  with  half 
of  it." 

Then  he  paused  a  little  and  in  substance  he 
said  this: 

That  he  should  look  round  for  a  wide-awake 
man,  anywhere  between  thirty  and  forty  years 
old,  who  knew  decently  well  how  to  live,  how 
other  people  liked  to  live,  and  how  they  could 
help  each  other  in  that  affair.  Then  he  should 
tell  this  man  to  talk  with  the  real  estate  men  and 
the  steamboat  men  and  electric  men  and  tell 
them  that  they  might  know  what  was  wanted. 
Then  he  must  go  to  the  best  six  places  which 
they  suggested,  and  he  must  buy  one  of  those 
places,  at  least  six  thousand  acres  of  land  lying 
together  within  twenty  miles  of  the  City  Hall. 
Dr.  Primrose  thought  and  thinks  that  even 
if  they  have  to  give  a  hundred  dollars  an 

[9*] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


acre  for  this  land  they  can  get  it.  I  have  thought 
and  think  they  can  get  it  for  less. 

Anyway,  this  thousand  acres  is  the  new  Amer- 
ica which  Dr.  Primrose  and  his  middleman  have 
discovered.  The  Doctor  would  then  send  out 
some  intelligent  young  engineer  who  would  lay 
this  out  into  the  village  his  half  million  dollars 
is  going  to  establish.  He  lays  out  the  thousand 
acres  into  two  hundred  lots  of  four  acres  each, 
and  he  leaves  two  hundred  acres,  be  the  same 
more  or  less,  for  the  streets,  parks,  and  breath- 
ing places  of  the  new  town.  The  surveyors,  as 
in  Mr.  Oilman's  edifying  book,  have  already  laid 
out  the  town  as  we  cut  a  pie  into  segments.  In 
the  middle  you  have  a  round  square  with  the 
"meeting-house"  in  the  middle  of  it,  and  then* 
the  roads  go  out  as  the  knife  does  when  you  cut 
the  pie,  and  the  house  lots  take  their  shape,  more 
or  less,  according  to  these  radiating  streets. 

Anyhow,  according  as  the  land  directs,  up 
hill,  down  dale,  old  orchards,  old  wood  lots  or 
what  not,  the  village  gets  laid  out  into  two  hun- 
dred house  lots,  as  I  have  said.  Then  the  pro- 
per architect  is  secured — some  young  man  who 
has  not  too  many  crotchets,  who  knows  the 
American  people  and  believes  in  the  people ;  and 
he  and  Dr.  Primrose  and  the  middleman  put 
their  heads  together  and  they  build  twenty  dif- 

[93] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


ferent  sorts  of  houses  on  these  two  hundred  lots, 
having  about  four  acres,  observe,  to  each  house. 
Half  of  these  houses  cost  six  hundred  dollars 
apiece,  and  half  of  them  cost  two  thousand  dol- 
lars apiece.  But  they  can  be  built  cheaply  though 
they  are  built  well,  because  one  contractor  takes 
the  whole  job  and  everything  is  done  at  whole- 
sale prices. 

While  this  enterprise  is  going  forward  lots 
and  lots  of  people  are  getting  acquainted  with 
the  neighborhood.  A  really  good  "meeting- 
house" is  being  built  in  the  middle  of  the  new 
town.  And  everybody  understands  that  this 
"meeting-house"  is  for  as  many  services  of  wor- 
ship as  any  one  wants  on  Sunday,  and  is 
for  lectures  on  everything  from  quaternions 
down  to  juggling,  and  concerts  from  rag-time 
up  to  the  latest  Wagner — it  is  really  a  meeting- 
house. 

Meanwhile  Dr.  Primrose  and  his  friends  have 
been  bullying  the  Cataraugus  and  Opelousas 
Railway,  which  runs  within  a  mile  and  a  half 
of  the  place.  They  have  played  them  off  against 
the  Fourier  and  Owen  Railway,  which  runs  two 
miles  on  the  other  side,  and  they  have  made  them 
agree  to  an  annual  ticket,  so  that  a  man  can  go 
backwards  and  forwards  into  the  city,  if  he  be 
a  regular  inhabitant  of  the  new  town,  for  ten 

[94] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


cents  a  day.  Then  Dr.  Primrose  says  that  things 
are  ready  to  begin.  He  says  that  this  enterprise 
will  have  cost  him  when  he  is  ready  to  begin  two 
hundred  thousand  dollars.  He  says  that  on  an 
average  he  shall  sell  his  houses  for  fifteen  hun- 
dred dollars  apiece;  some  of  them  will  be  as 
cheap  as  a  thousand  dollars  apiece,  and  some  of 
them  will  be  as  dear  as  three  thousand  dollars 
apiece.  But  when  a  man  pays  he  will  pay  with 
the  understanding  and  agreement  that  he  is  to 
pay  one-tenth  part  of  the  money  every  year,  so  it 
will  happen  that  some  people  get  their  houses  for 
a  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  some  people  get 
their  houses  for  three  hundred  dollars  a  year. 
But  at  the  end  of  ten  years  they  will  own  the 
houses.  Dr.  Primrose  says  that  if  he  can  get 
the  ear  of  an  Odd  Fellows'  lodge  or  a  society  of 
temperance,  or  "The  Newly  Born  Association 
of  the  Grandsons  of  the  Followers  of  Knick- 
bocker,"  or  any  other  community  which  has  a  tie 
of  common  interest,  he  shall  make  them  get  to- 
gether there.  If  he  can  make  any  community 
or  organization  get  together  in  his  new  town, 
he  will  do  so. 

But  he  does  not  care,  he  says,  if  two  hundred 
families  of  people  are  living  together  and  go  in 
the  trains  together  and  go  out  on  the  trains 
together,  and  meet  in  the  same  places  and  same 

[95] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


conferences,  he  says  there  will  be  community 
enough  for  him. 

He  says  as  for  the  "meeting-house,"  he  is 
willing  that  the  Catholics  shall  occupy  it  Sunday 
at  nine  o'clock,  the  Methodists  at  eleven  o'clock, 
and  the  Salvation  Army  at  one  o'clock,  the  Ger- 
man Reform  of  the  Second  Secession  at  three 
and  the  Universalists  at  five  and  the  Episcopa- 
lians at  seven,  they  may  do  so,  every  Sunday, 
rent  free.  But  they  have  to  pay  for  their  own 
electric  lights. 

Then  Dr.  Primrose  says  that  in  ten  years  from 
the  time  he  began  the  whole  property  will  be  in 
the  hands  of  these  people,  that  he  shall  have 
made  five  per  cent,  on  his  investment,  "be  the 
same  more  or  less,"  and  that  he  shall  go  to 
heaven  with  the  consciousness  that  two  hundred 
families  have  grown  up  under  God's  open  sky  in 
God's  open  air,  and  that  they  own  their  own 
homes. 

WHAT  NEXT? 

IT  is  twenty  years  ago  that  I  heard  Dawson, 
the  head  of  physical  science  in  America, 
say  in  a  public  address  that  the  men  of  our 
time  were  frightened.     He  said  that  our 
scientific  men  had  overcome  great  difficulties;  he 

[96] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


said  that  they  had  solved  nature's  most  difficult 
questions;  he  said  they  understood  her  secrets 
and  could  interpret  her  laws,  and  then  he  made 
an  exclamation  in  somewhat  these  words:  "They 
have  come  to  the  ocean  of  life,  and  they  are 
afraid  to  plunge  in !  They  will  say  of  us, 
'These  men  were  afraid  to  use  their  own  great 
discoveries.  Why  were  they  satisfied  with  such 
trifles  as  steam  engines,  locomotives,  ocean  steam- 
ships, electric  telegraph,  the  telephone,  the  micro- 
phone and  the  macrophone?  While  they  were 
playing  with  such  toys,  they  refused  to  use  the 
great  resources,  which  Nature  gave  them,  now 
that  they  had  solved  her  mysteries.'  ' 

Such  a  speech  from  the  man  who  had  the  best 
right  to  make  it,  is  worth  remembering  now  that 
the  twenty-five  lastyears  of  the  century  have  gone 
by.  Here  is  every  man  of  us  who  lives  in  New 
York,  in  Boston,  in  Philadelphia,  or  in  London, 
one  thousand  times  stronger  than  his  ancestor 
was  in  1802.  Do  we  really  mean  to  sulk  off 
and  eat  ice  cream  and  drink  soda  water  ?  Do  we 
mean  to  satisfy  ourselves  with  playing  ping-pong 
and  tennis  ?  No,  we  do  not  mean  any  such  tom- 
foolery. We  have  four  or  five  great  enterprises 
before  us  now,  and  we  mean  to  take  them  up  and 
carry  them  on. 

For  us  in  America  the  visible,  palpable,  prac- 

[97] 


'WE,   THE  PEOPLE* 


tical,  matter-of-course  thing  is  to  build  our  four- 
track  railway  from  the  south  end  of  Hudson's 
Bay  to  the  south  end  of  South  America.  We 
have  timidly  found  out  that  this  is  our  business, 
and  we  have  been  fiddling  about  it  and  fuddling 
about  it  and  talking  about  it  since  Mr.  Elaine's 
Pan-American  congress  in  Washington  in  the 
year  1889.  The  American  powers  then  appoint- 
ed the  proper  commissioners  to  make  the  report 
on  the  North  and  South  railroad  which  should 
extend  from  Canada  to  Patagonia.  This  re- 
port in  many  volumes  with  many  maps  is  now 
at  last  finished,  and  the  questions  are  frankly 
attacked  and  wisely  considered.  Our  business 
now  is  to  take  hold  and  do  this  thing.  This  rail- 
road is  to  be  built  not  by  Wall  Street,  not  by 
watered  bonds,  not  by  any  kite-flying,  balloon 
making;  it  is  to  be  built  by  the  great  American 
powers — the  United  States,  Mexico,  Brazil,  Chile, 
and  the  Argentine,  and  the  lesser  powers  will 
chip  in  enough  to  be  able  to  say  in  a  few  centuries 
that  they  had  their  share  in  it. 

As  I  said,  it  will  be  a  four-track  railway,  laid 
with  the  heaviest  metal,  in  the  best  way.  It 
will  have  the.  best  equipment  possible — that  is 
to  say,  American  equipment,  provided  with  the 
best  skill  of  the  engineers.  The  engineers  will  be 
appointed  by  the  different  governments,  and  this 

[98] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


means  that  very  largely  they  will  be  chosen  from 
the  accomplished  staff  of  men  who  have  bridged 
the  great  rivers  of  the  world  and  have  built  the 
great  railways  of  the  world. 

When  this  railway  is  finished  Mrs.  Welken- 
bloumite  may  tell  William  to  drive  her  from  her 
palace  uptown  to  the  station;  she  may  go  into 
her  private  parlor  car  with  white  satin  slippers 
on,  and  she  may  ride  to  the  City  of  Mexico,  to 
the  city  of  Guatemala,  to  Lima,  to  Rio  Janeiro, 
or  to  the  city  of  Buenos  Ayres  without  having 
left  the  car. 

Or  if  Annie  Moriarty,  who  has  had  that  nasty 
little  cough  ever  since  she  caught  cold  last  Sep- 
tember, wants  to  go  to  the  most  perfect  table- 
land in  the  world,  and  her  father  has  twenty 
dollars  to  send  her,  he  can  send  her  to  the  up- 
lands of  central  Mexico.  And  she  will  get  well 
and  be  a  happy  woman  for  the  rest  of  her  life. 
Or  if  our  Alabama  friends  of  the  white  persua- 
sion are  really  sick  of  the  company  of  our  other 
friends  of  the  black  persuasion,  our  friends  of 
the  black  persuasion  can  pack  up  their  things  and 
settle  themselves  in  the  valley  of  the  Amazon, 
which,  according  to  a  distinguished  English 
traveller,  is  going  to  be  the  centre  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  world  before  a  hundred  years  more 
have  gone  by. 

[99] 


,  THE  PEOPLE' 


THE  NEW  JOURNALISM. 

WHOEVER  looks  at  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin's newspaper,  or  the  Mercurio, 
or  an  early  Sentinel,  sees  at  once 
that  the  old  newspaper,  as  it  was 
called,  was  as  different  from  the  newspaper  of 
to-day  as  a  pterodactyl  monster  of  diluvian  ages 

is  different  from  a  belle  at  Mrs.  R 's  party. 

First,  what  was  called  news  was  always  old. 
Second,  the  statement  was  generally  wrong. 
Third,  the  newspaper  had  virtually  no  effect 
whatever  upon  the  course  of  public  opinion. 

The  truth  is  that  with  the  telegram  we 
changed  everything.  No  man  can  be  said  now 
to  live  in  the  city  of  New  York  or  the  city  of 
London  as  Peter  Stuyvesant  lived  in  New  York 
or  as  Daniel  DeFoe  lived  in  London.  A  man 
of  large  affairs  is  perhaps  in  closer  touch  with  his 
correspondent  in  St.  Petersburg  or  Calcutta  than 
he  is  with  his  own  family  uptown.  And  he  is 
really  not  simply  a  citizen  of  the  city  in  the  old 
sense;  he  is  a  citizen  of  the  world. 

This  change  has  made  necessary  a  change  in 
the  journalism  of  the  world  which  is  certain  to 
show  itself  more  and  more  visibly,  as  we  are 
proud  to  say  it  already  shows  itself  in  the  world's 
leading  journals.  A  New  York  journal  which 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


governs  itself  by  the  traditions  or  the  customs 
of  1880  is  now  simply  provincial.  The  Cran- 
berry Centre  Gazette  may  be  satisfied  with  say- 
ing that  Miss  Goodchild  gave  a  doll  party  in 
Lovers'  Lane.  But  the  business  of  an  American 
journal  is,  as  our  readers  well  know,  to  tell  from 
day  to  day  what  has  happened  in  the  villages 
or  in  the  cities  of  every  latitude  and  longitude. 
It  is,  indeed,  almost  as  easy  for  the  American 
Journal  to  give  an  account  of  a  fire  in  the  business 
part  of  San  Francisco  as  to  describe  such  a  fire 
in  William  Street  or  Wall  Street. 

The  change  in  journalism  shows  itself  as  well 
in  the  cosmopolitan  character  of  the  opinions 
which  a  great  journal  expresses.  These  are  no 
longer  confined  to  the  local  politics  of  Cranberry 
Centre  or  Little  Peddlington,  of  Ispahan,  of 
Edinburgh,  or  of  London,  or  of  New  York. 
What  men  have  a  right  to  consider  now  is  the 
public  opinion  of  the  world,  and  the  newspaper 
is  to  reflect  not  simply  the  impression  of  the  two 
or  three  people  who  may  be  the  "we"  of  the 
London  Times  as  late  as  1890.  The  daily  jour- 
nal of  the  twentieth  century  brings  into  the  con- 
versation of  breakfast  or  of  dinner  the  daily 
opinion  of  mankind. 

At  the  time  when  the  late  Mr.  Allen Thorndike 
Rice  died,  in  consequence  of  a  misfortune  greatly 

[101] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


to  be  regretted,  he  had  proposed  to  himself  the 
publication  of  a  journal  in  New  York,  in  San 
Francisco,  and  in  Chicago,  which  should  be  al- 
most alike  for  every  city,  so  far  as  news  columns 
and  the  columns  of  instruction  and  education 
were  concerned.  But  the  Chicago  issue  would 
contain  Chicago  advertisements,  the  New  York 
issue  would  contain  those  of  New  York,  and  the 
San  Francisco  issue  would  contain  those  of  the 
Pacific.  The  news,  he  said,  if  properly  stated, 
was  the  same  for  all, — a  battle  at  Caracas,  a 
canal  across  the  isthmus,  the  fortunes  of  the 
Philippines;  the  Chicago  merchant  wanted  to 
read  what  the  New  York  merchant  wanted  to 
read,  and  there  was  a  certain  satisfaction  to  each 
reader  to  know  that  he  was  in  the  same  boat  with 
his  brother  or  his  correspondent  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world. 

As  for  the  expression  of  opinion,  Mr.  Rice 
would  say  the  readers  had  a  right  to  the  opinion 
of  the  men  in  whom  the  country  had  put  confi- 
dence. When  he  made  the  forecast  for  his 
twentieth  century  daily,  his  proposal  was  that 
the  senators  of  the  United  States  should  write 
the  leading  articles,  or  their  share  of  them.  In 
that  way,  he  said,  the  reader  would  know  that 
he  was  near  the  centre  of  the  executive  action, 
and  that  he  was  taken  into  the  confidence  of  the 
leaders  of  the  majority. 

[  102] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


SPACE  WRITING. 

THE  old-fashioned  reader  will  not  know 
what  the  words  "space  writing"  mean. 
If  he  be  a  very  old-fashioned  reader, 
he  will  know  what  the  words  penny- 
a-liner  mean. 

Space  writing  makes  the  world  more  trouble 
than  the  world  at  large  knows.  The  newspaper 
editors  find  it  a  convenience  at  the  moment,  but 
for  the  real  purpose  of  journalism  and  for  the 
real  interest  of  the  readers  of  daily  newspapers 
space  writing  is  a  great  nuisance. 

It  first  appeared  in  the  arrangements  of  Eng- 
lish printing-offices  very  early  after  the  publica- 
tion of  newspapers.  I  suppose  that  even  Daniel 
DeFoe  had  occasion  from  time  to  time  to  furnish 
copy  which  would  now  be  called  space  writing 
in  the  office  of  one  or  another  London  journal. 
I  suppose  that  that  mysterious  person,  Roger 
L'Estrange,  who  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  of 
editors,  may  have  engaged  some  of  the  most 
ignorant  and  some  of  the  most  brilliant  men  of 
his  time,  and  permitted  them  to  do  space  writing 
for  his  journal.  But  this  name  is  quite  modern. 
It  belongs  to  the  present  generation. 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  hangers-on  in  the 
journalistic  end  of  London  who  furnished  the 

[  103] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


sort  of  copy  now  known  as  space  writing  were 
called  penny-a-liners.  Eventually,  the  price 
paid  to  them  was  raised  to  a  penny  and  a  half  a 
line.  But  the  name  still  continued,  and  would 
have  been  understood  among  journalists  for  the 
first  three-quarters  of  the  last  century.  The 
penny-a-liner  was  probably  a  man  who  knew 
nothing  on  any  subject,  and  cared  less.  But  he 
was  able,  or  thought  he  was  able,  to  pick  up  from 
day  to  day  something  which  would  at  least  fill 
up  the  end  of  a  column  in  a  newspaper.  Or,  if 
he  had  good  luck,  he  might  awaken  a  momen- 
tary spasm  in  the  jaded  heart  of  the  average 
newspaper  reader.  The  penny-a-liner  got  out 
of  bed  in  the  morning  quite  ignorant  of  what  he 
was  to  write  upon  that  day.  And  if  by  good 
luck,  coming  through  some  narrow  court  or  wynd 
in  some  of  the  out-of-the-way  streets,  he  saw  a 
French  emigrant  escaping  from  his  creditor,  or 
saw  a  woman  lifted  out  of  a  window  by  a  fireman 
who  took  her  down  a  ladder,  the  penny-a-liner 
wrote  the  incident  up  as  well  as  he  could,  and 
carried  it  rapidly  to  the  Morning  Chronicle  or 
the  London  Times  or  other  journal,  in  the  hope 
that  no  one  else  had  seen  the  incident,  and  yet 
that  he  had  given  it  importance  enough  to  inter- 
est the  editor.  If  he  and  the  editor  had  drunk 
beer  together  in  the  same  tap-room,  this  gave 
[  104] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


him  a  sort  of  claim.  If  the  editor  was  lazy  that 
day  or  he  wanted  to  take  his  nearest  friends  to 
see  the  lions,  and  therefore  wanted  to  fill  up  his 
empty  columns  as  well  as  he  could,  that  was  good 
luck.  The  editor  took  the  penny-a-liner's  copy. 
As  matter  of  conscience,  he  scratched  out  half 
of  it.  The  cashier  in  the  counting-room  next 
took  it,  counting  the  number  of  lines  which  had 
been  spared.  And  the  poor  creature  was  paid  a 
penny  originally,  and  afterward  six  farthings  for 
each  line  that  passed  criticism. 

Sometimes  no  woman  was  saved  from  a  win- 
dow, sometimes  no  French  emigrant  escaped 
from  his  landlord,  the  heavens  were  blue  above, 
the  Thames  rose  to  the  right  point  at  high  tide, 
and  then  the  penny-a-liner,  if  he  were  to  have 
any  dinner,  had  to  fall  back  upon  his  own  re- 
sources. These  were  very  limited.  Old  news- 
paper men  will  recollect  one  or  two  of  the  skel- 
etons which,  from  time  to  time,  had  fresh  skins 
put  upon  them,  that  they  might  parade.  One 
of  the  jokes  of  newspaper  offices,  when  I  was  a 
boy,  was  the  reappearance  every  two  years  of  the 
following  paragraph : 

"It  is  not  generally  known  why  pawnbrokers 
have  for  their  signs  three  golden  balls.  The 
reader  will  be  interested  when  he  learns  that 
these  balls  originally  represented  pills,  that  the 

[105] 


,   THE  PEOPLE* 


three  gold  pills  were  the  cognizance  of  the  house 
of  Medici,  whose  connection  with  pills  is  indi- 
cated by  their  celebrated  name.  The  business  of 
pawnbrokers  was  invented  in  the  palmy  days  of 
Florentine  commerce,  and  with  the  armorial 
bearings  of  the  Medici  it  has  gone  over  the  civil- 
ized world.  Many  a  poor  fellow,  therefore, 
receives  a  shilling  for  his  watch  or  for  his  pencil- 
case,  who  never  heard  of  the  great  Lorenzo  or 
any  other  Medici  of  his  time." 

According  as  the  office  editor  was  old  or 
young,  this  paragraph  or  something  like  it, 
longer  or  shorter,  would  slip  into  the  journals 
about  once  in  two  years.  It  is  not  yet  dead.  I 
have  seen  it  since  1890  in  one  or  other  of  our 
Boston  journals.  Another  of  the  penny-a-liner's 
stock  in  trade  was  the  question  who  was  the 
author  of  "God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn 
lamb."  Yet  another  was  the  authorship  of 
Braham's  song,  "Though  Lost  to  Sight,  to  Mem- 
ory Dear." 

Now,  unlearned  readers  do  not  know  what 
people  connected  with  the  press  do  know:  that, 
under  a  requisition  of  the  printing  art,  there  must 
be  precisely  so  many  square  inches  on  each  page 
of  each  journal.  You  cannot  use  more  square 
inches  on  the  day  when  London  has  been  burned 
down.  You  cannot  use  less  on  a  day  when  Lon- 

[106] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


don  has  not  been  burned  down.  You  must  pre- 
tend every  day  that  that  day  is  as  important  as 
the  day  before. 

As  journalism  improved  in  London,  which 
always  struck  the  keynote  for  newspapers  in  the 
English  language,  the  race  of  the  old  penny-a- 
liners  died  out.  In  this  country,  in  those  earlier 
days,  he  never  got  any  foothold.  And,  as  jour- 
nalism came  to  its  best  in  America,  such  people 
would  hardly  have  been  tolerated  in  a  well-con- 
ducted office.  The  theory  of  a  great  journal 
forty  years  ago  was  that  it  had  a  competent  edi- 
tor who  could  judge  of  what  was  important  in 
the  world  and  what  was  not  important.  This 
editor  had  a  circle  of  friends  who  had  his  confi- 
dence and  the  confidence  of  the  public,  to  whom 
on  each  occasion  he  could  refer  a  subject  of 
which  he  was  not  himself  informed.  If  an 
eclipse  were  to  take  place  on  a  given  morning, 
the  first  astronomer  in  that  region  furnished  for 
that  journal  the  information,  curious  or  essential, 
which  it  was  desirable  that  the  readers  of  the 
journal  should  read.  If  a  new  bill  were  intro- 
duced in  the  legislature,  some  person  who  under- 
stood that  subject  was  invited  to  furnish  for  the 
readers  of  that  journal  what  was  necessary  for 
their  opinions.  The  newspaper  was  considered 
successful  or  not  according  as  its  staff  was  select- 
[  107] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


ed  of  well-informed  persons  or  no.  The  writer 
naturally  and  properly  took  the  plural  number 
in  which  to  speak — "We  suppose  this  or  that" — 
instead  of  volunteering  a  mere  personal  opinion. 
I  am  not  sure  whether  I  am  right ;  but  I  suppose 
that  the  revolution  of  this  business  in  America 
began  with  the  elder  Bennett,  the  inventor  and 
publisher  of  the  New  York  Herald.  A  gentle- 
man who  met  Bennett  on  the  piazza  of  Congress 
Hall,  the  famous  hotel  at  Saratoga,  half  a  cen- 
tury ago,  said  to  him,  "What  is  the  secret  of  a 
great  newspaper,  Mr.  Bennett?"  To  which 
Bennett  replied  with  an  oath  or  two,  "To  make  a 
great  row  about  something  every  day."  Whether 
Bennett  originated  this  custom  or  not,  it  is  the 
custom  of  to-day.  We  do  not  expect  any  per- 
spective in  our  journals.  The  editor  does  not 
seek  any.  The  instructions  for  him  are  that 
that  given  number  of  the  journal  in  his  reader's 
hands  shall  affect  to  be  the  most  important  in 
history.  If  one  crazy  woman  is  suspected  of 
having  put  poison  in  the  teacup  of  another  crazy 
woman,  these  two  crazy  women  must  be  repre- 
sented that  day  as  being  the  most  important  per- 
sons in  the  world.  Readers  at  a  distance  must 
suppose  that  the  particular  street  in  the  particular 
suburb  where  these  two  crazy  women  reside  is 
the  most  important  place  in  the  world.  You 

[108] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


must  not  bother  your  head  about  improvement 
in  science,  about  advance  in  discovery  unless  it 
is  news — unless  it  is  news  of  that  character  which 
stimulates  jaded  readers. 

The  old  line  who  read  their  newspapers  every 
morning,  they  can  be  trusted.  But  what  that 
given  newspaper  on  that  given  day  has  to  do  is 
to  keep  up  the  circulation  of  the  day  before,  and, 
if  possible,  to  enlarge  it.  The  old  penny-a-liner, 
therefore,  has  been  born  again.  The  class  of 
men,  and,  one  is  sorry  to  say,  of  women,  who 
wake  up  in  the  morning  ignorant  and  careless 
of  all  subjects,  but  who  have  their  living  to  make 
before  night,  has  been  created  in  the  larger  cities. 
The  old  stager  recognizes  their  work.  Once  in 
two  years  he  sees  the  three  balls  come  round 
again.  Once  in  twenty  years  he  is  called  upon 
to  inquire  about  "Lost  to  Sight,  to  Memory 
Dear."  The  general  office  editor  is  compara- 
tively a  young  man.  He  comes  to  know  people 
who  write  a  good  hand  and  who  do  not  write  a 
good  hand ;  he  comes  to  know  people  who  under- 
stand the  average  taste  of  the  community;  he 
comes  to  know  what  sort  of  writers  get  him  into 
scrapes  and  what  sort  of  writers  do  not.  And 
thus  gradually  it  happens  that  about  the  fifth 
part  of  the  "matter,"  happily  so  called,  in  the 
leading  journals,  is  made  up  of  work  of  the 
[  109] 


"space  writer."  He  starts  on  the  morning  as 
the  old  penny-a-liner  did.  If  there  is  a  good 
snow-storm,  and  two  cars  are  blocked,  in  one 
of  which  he  is,  possibly,  that  incident  can  be  writ- 
ten up  into  something  as  important  as  the  battle 
of  Waterloo.  If  he  is  really  a  master  of  his 
craft,  it  is.  For  this,  however,  it  is  best  if  he 
has  never  heard  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo. 

In  fact,  the  moment  the  space  writer  knows 
anything  on  any  subject,  he  is,  from  the  nature 
of  the  case,  so  far  unfitted  for  the  profession 
which  he  has  chosen.  For  his  business  is  not 
with  yesterday:  it  is  with  to-day.  He  really  wants 
to  say  that  the  speech  that  he  has  heard  is  the 
most  remarkable  speech  which  was  ever  deliv- 
ered. He  does  not  want  to  know  anything  about 
Demosthenes  or  Cicero  or  Lord  Chatham  or 
Mr.  Sumner.  So  far  as  his  work  is  concerned, 
it  is  better  that  he  should  not.  Unfortunately, 
it  happens  that  the  counting-rooms,  which  con- 
duct the  leading  journals,  have  taken  the  impres- 
sion that  their  journals  must  talk  about  every- 
thing. There  is  a  class  of  special  journals,  of 
which  the  great  daily  newspaper  knows  nothing, 
and  which  it  is  very  desirous  not  to  imitate,  such 
as  the  Banker's  Journal,  devoted  to  the  specialty 
of  banking;  such  as  the  Wheelwright's  Journal, 
devoted  to  the  specialty  of  wheels;  such  as  the 
[no] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


liquor  men's  journal  or  the  coal  men's  journal. 
But  the  theory  of  the  first-class  daily  is  that  it 
must  deal  with  everything  that  is  "newsy." 
This,  of  course,  involves  the  necessity  of  employ- 
ing a  very  large  number  of  space  writers.  The 
number  is  so  large  that  it  is  really  impossible  to 
pay  them  more  than  the  money  which  will  keep 
them  alive  from  one  week  to  another. 

The  necessity  of  the  space  writer  is  to  know 
nothing  on  any  subject,  and  it  happens,  unfortu- 
nately, that  the  necessity  of  the  counting-room  is 
the  same.  If  Mr.  Kipling  or  Mr.  Haggard  or 
Mr.  Davis  undertook  the  profession  of  the  space 
writer,  he  would  very  soon  find  that  he  knew 
too  much  for  his  business.  The  night  editor 
does  not  want  to  have  discussions  about  the  style 
of  Addison  or  Steele,  he  does  not  care  whether 
Julius  Caesar  were  a  friend  of  the  people  or  a 
friend  of  the  aristocracy.  For  the  space  writer 
as  for  the  night  editor,  and  for  the  supposed  pub- 
lic which  buys  the  journal,  it  would  have  been 
better  had  no  such  persons  ever  existed  as  Julius 
Caesar  and  Mr.  Steele  and  Mr.  Addison. 

It  is  perhaps  not  necessary  to  say  all  this  in 
this  column;  but  this  column  will  reach  the  eye 
of  a  good  many  humble  people  who  at  the  end 
of  a  week  are  stunned,  I  do  not  say  annoyed, 
but  troubled,  because  they  find  they  have  read 


"WE,   THE  PEOPLE" 


the  newspaper  for  a  week  and  that  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  while  they  are  quite  well  informed  on 
a  great  many  important  topics,  they  are  not  quite 
so  wise  as  they  were  when  the  week  began.  In 
a  weekly  journal  we  can  say  what  I  could  not 
say  if  I  were  writing  as  a  space  writer  on  a  daily 
journal,  that  the  correction  of  follies,  faults,  and 
failures  of  the  space  writer  is  to  be  found  in  the 
weekly  newspaper.  The  weekly  newspaper  has 
no  excuse  whatever  for  employing  him.  He 
must  go  with  his  ephemeral  "matter"  to  the  office 
of  some  journal  which  wishes  to  be  ephemeral 
itself.  "The  newspaper  is  not  history."  That 
is  a  very  fine  remark,  because  singularly  true, — 
a  remark  by  which  one  of  the  great  editors  of 
to-day  described  the  daily  journal  of  to-day. 

The  real  remedy  will  come  when  some  truly 
great  journalist  corrects  the  absurd  mistake 
which  leads  every  daily  newspaper  to  undertake 
everything.  This  great  journalist  will  under- 
stand that  a  staff  of  only  twenty  intelligent  and 
accomplished  writers  is  better  than  a  floating 
staff  of  a  hundred  boys  and  girls  who  are  not 
intelligent  and  are  not  accomplished. 


[112] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


THE  CITY  OF  WASHINGTON. 

THE  Washington  people  have  invented 
what  may  be  called  a  motto  for  their 
city. 

They  say  when  a  man  moves  into 
Washington  with  his  family,  and  buys  or  builds 
a  handsome  house  on  one  of  the  A,  B,  C  streets 
or  one  of  the  avenues,  the  Washington  question 
is,  "What  can  he  do?" 

This  is  their  cap  to  the  old  joke  which  pretends 
that  in  Boston  we  ask  of  a  visitor,  "What  does 
he  know?"  or  in  New  York  we  ask,  "What  is 
he  worth?"  In  Philadelphia  we  ask,  "Who 
was  his  grandfather?"  and  in  many  cities,  alas, 
"Where  is  he  going?" 

Washington  deserves  the  credit  of  its  own 
joke,  which  gives  quite  a  good  idea  of  the  city 
and  its  life.  "Who  is  that  man?"  "Oh,  he  is 
So-and-so,  who  makes  anvils  when  he  is  at  home. 
Your  horse  was  shod  with  a  shoe  that  was  made 
on  one  of  So-and-so's  anvils." 

"Who  is  that?"  "Oh,  he  is  the  man  who 
ordered  his  men  to  breakfast,  and  when  they  had 
had  their  mocha  and  shredded  wheat  he  told 
them  to  sink  a  Spanish  fleet,  and  they  sank  it." 

"Who  is  that  ?"  "Oh,  he  is  the  fiftieth  paral- 
lel  man;  you  know  they  opened  up  the  Monon- 
gahela."  [113] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


"Well,  that  man,  there,  crossing  the  street?" 

"Oh,  he  corrected  the  longitude  of  the  world. 
There  is  not  a  civilized  nation  but  had  to  correct 
its  charts  by  his  longitude." 

"Who  is  that  man  getting  into  his  cab?" 

"Oh,  he  is  one  of  two  or  three  American 
members  of  the  French  Institute.  He  will  go 
there  some  day  on  his  wings." 

People  speak  as  if  Washington  were  a  nest  of 
wire-pullers,  trying  to  get  themselves  into  con- 
sulships at  Caracas  or  Sierra  Leone.  Of  course 
there  are  such  people;  but  then,  there  are  a  few 
flies  in  the  summer  dining  parlor  at  Sherry's! 

There  is  another  queer  superstition  about 
Washington.  It  is  that  members  of  Congress 
have  a  very  soft  time  and  are  lazy  loafers. 

The  truth  is  that  almost  all  of  them  are  among 
the  hardest  worked  men  in  the  world.  Just 
think  of  it.  A  member  of  Congress  has  on  his 
conscience,  and  more  or  less  on  his  mind,  the  af- 
fairs of  a  nation  extending  from  ocean  to  ocean. 
He  must  be  in  his  place  at  committees,  or  in  the 
House  or  Senate,  and  vote  as  he  thinks  right  at 
the  right  moment.  This  means  that  he  must 
somehow  make  up  his  mind  on  this,  that,  and 
another  bill.  Three  thousand,  one  hundred  and 
two  House  Bill  was  the  last  that  happened  to  be 
sent  to  me  for  my  opinion. 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


Besides  all  this,  the  poor  fellow  has  to  attend 
to  the  letters  and  the  wishes  of  nearly  three  hun- 
dred thousand  people  who  are  in  his  district.  I 
do  not  know  that  I  ever  saw  my  member  of  Con- 
gress. I  do  know  that  I  have  voted  against  him 
when  I  have  had  a  chance.  All  the  same,  when 
I  need  a  document  which  has  been  printed  for  my 
information  and  use,  if  I  need  it,  I  write  to  this 
gentleman,  and  he  or  one  of  his  clerks  answers 
my  letter. 

Now,  the  people  are  not  fools.  Say  what  the 
grumbler  pleases,  the  people  do  not  send  three 
hundred  imbecile  rascals  as  their  representatives 
in  the  greatest  council  in  the  world.  The  men 
who  are  sent  to  Congress  are  inevitably  men  of 
great  ability  in  one  line  or  another.  More  than 
this,  they  are  men  who  have  been  trained  to 
business  and  have  the  promptness  and  energy 
of  that  training. 

The  English  House  of  Commons  has  one 
member  for  every  sixty-one  thousand  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  The  American 
House  of  Representatives  has  about  one  member 
for  every  one  hundred  and  seventy-three  thou- 
sand people.  It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  responsi- 
bilities of  each  member  of  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives is  three  times  as  great  as  that  of  each 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons. 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


In  fifty  years  I  have  never  seen  any  American 
Congress  which  for  ability,  for  the  power  of  put- 
ting things  through  and  of  putting  a  great  many 
things  through,  was  not  far  in  advance  of  any 
House  of  Commons  for  the  same  time. 

Here  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  Washing- 
ton is  so  attractive  a  place,  whether  in  the  session 
of  Congress  or  out  of  it.  "Man  is  the  nobler 
growth  our  realms  supply."  And  it  is  a  very 
good  thing  to  go  somewhere  where  you  can  see 
first-rate  men. 

SODOM  AND  GOMORRAH. 

WARREN  BURTON,  who  was  the 
author  of   "The   District   School 
as    It    Was,"    was    at    one    time 
the    chaplain    of    the    Worcester 
House  of  Correction. 

He  came  one  day  to  the  meeting  of  the 
Worcester  County  Association  of  Ministers,  and 
called  to  the  attention  of  all  the  gentlemen  pres- 
ent a  duty  of  the  first  importance.  It  represented 
fifteen  or  more  different  parishes  of  Worcester 
County.  He  wanted  us  to  promise  that  the  next 
Monday  every  man  of  us  should  take  his  horse 
and  wagon  and  go  on  a  visitation  to  the  outlying 
corners  of  the  township,  to  the  huts  or  houses 
[116] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


three  or  four  miles  from  the  "centre,"  which 
meant  from  the  meeting-house.  He  said  that 
crime,  as  the  law  got  hold  of  it  and  as  the  prison 
received  the  criminal,  was  more  often  bred  in 
places  which  got  the  name  of  "Hell  Corner"  or 
the  "Devil's  Home"  than  it  was  in  the  villages. 
He  reminded  us  of  the  outcasts,  like  so  many 
Samaritans  described  in  Judd's  novel  of 
"Margaret,"  then  fresh  in  people's  attention. 
And  he  said  that  we  were  all  in  danger  of  letting 
this  class  of  people  and  their  children  and  their 
children's  children  drift  off  into  a  lawless  and 
godless  set  of  pariahs  who  would  furnish  the 
criminal  classes — what  Charles  Booth  has  since 
called  the  Class  A  of  his  social  order. 

The  truth  was  that  in  those  years  of  the  fifties 
we  were  beginning  to  learn  in  Massachusetts 
what  was  the  first-fruit  of  the  much  over-praised 
amendment  of  1833,  which  made  the  support  of 
the  ministry  of  the  State  absolutely  voluntary. 
Till  that  time  every  taxpayer  in  the  State — and 
this  meant  every  man  or  woman  more  than  eigh- 
teen years  old — paid  his  share  of  the  annual  sal- 
ary of  the  minister  of  the  town.  He  had  a  right 
— which  even  a  Philistine  could  measure — to  the 
time,  the  service  and  care  of  one  or  another  of 
the  ministers  of  the  town.  They  knew  this,  and 
he  knew  it.  And  any  one  of  the  old  diaries  of 

[II?] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


those  earlier  days  which  records  the  doings  of 
one  of  the  old  ministers  will  show  that  they  spent 
more  time  in  their  rounds  in  "Hell  Corner"  and 
in  the  "Devil's  Den"  than  they  did  in  the  con- 
venient neighborly  calls  on  Hon.  George  Cham- 
pernoon  or  the  Widow  Mary  Wortley,  who 
lived  in  the  houses  round  the  Common.  This 
duty  of  the  minister — imposed  by  statute  and  by 
honor — had  ceased  to  be  such  a  duty  when  Bur- 
ton was  chaplain ;  and  he  began  to  see  the  conse- 
quences. 

It  would  be  very  hard  to  say  to-day  that  the 
first  duty  of  a  minister  in  an  active  town  is  to  go 
out  four  miles  from  his  church  and  see  to  the 
moral  or  intellectual  or  physical  need  of  a  family 
of  Swedes  or  Bulgarians  or  other  Arabs  which 
has  taken  up  an  abandoned  form  in  the  "gore" 
between  one  township  and  another.  Life  has 
too  many  central  duties — near  the  post-office  and 
the  factory — for  us  to  throw  the  oversight  of 
such  people  upon  the  minister  of  the  first  church 
or  the  second  church  or  the  new  church.  All 
the  same,  the  Swede  or  the  Bulgarian  or  the  Hill 
Cornerite  of  any  other  nationality  is  a  son  of  God 
or  a  daughter  of  God.  All  the  same,  they  are 
brothers  and  sisters  of  the  rest  of  us,  and  we  as- 
sert this  every  time  when  we  affect  to  be  Christian 
men  and  women.  And  one  asks  with  a  certain 
[118] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


curiosity,  What  is  the  best  way  "to  get  at  them," 
and  to  open  up  to  them  a  measure  of  the  light 
and  life  of  the  new  century  equal  to  that  which  is 
enjoyed  where  people  live  in  apartment  houses 
or  tenement  houses  or  other  man-made  prisons 
in  crowded  towns?  And  it  is  observable  by  all 
people  not  wholly  blind  or  deaf  that,  quite  out- 
side Assyrian  or  Hebrew  Scriptures,  there  is 
ample  evidence  that  the  Lord  God  began  his 
business  in  this  world,  so  far  as  men  are  con- 
cerned in  the  world,  by  planting  a  garden. 

Thus  simply  did  early  literature  express  the 
central  truth  that  the  Hell  Cornerite,  in  his  squat- 
ter's farm  of  five  acres — be  the  same  more  or  less 
— has  certain  spiritual  advantages  which  Ma- 
dame Champernoon,  in  the  felicities  of  a  flat 
heated  by  steam  and  defiled  by  soot,  cannot  share. 
And  we  ask  ourselves,  with  a  certain  curiosity, 
what  must  become  of  a  boy  or  girl  growing  up 
in  the  midst  of  the  homes  of  bluebirds  and  orioles 
and  chickadees,  who  know  the  voice  of  a  brook 
or  the  private  life  of  a  squirrel?  Is  there  any 
such  curse  on  modern  civilization  that  this  boy 
or  girl  is  compelled  to  live  in  ignorance  of  music, 
art,  and  literature,  and  even  religion? 

It  is  true  that  pagan  languages  and  pagan  peo- 
ple speak  as  if  such  joys  belong  to  cities  or  po- 
Lteness.  But  that  is  only  the  language  of  pagans, 

["9] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


of  people  who  live  in  towns.  Surveying  our 
own  country,  from  Tiajuana  across  to  Fort  Fair 
field,  it  would  seem  as  if  some  of  the  frontiers- 
men, with  an  occasional  visit  from  a  Methodist 
missionary  or  a  library  agent  of  the  Sunday- 
School  Union,  have  a  better  chance  than  the 
New  Englander  in  some  corner  Sodom  or  Go- 
morrah of  the  Old  Bay  State.  And  I  have 
never  been  more  encouraged  than  when  an  ac- 
complished scholar  told  me  the  other  day  that 
for  himself  he  did  not  mean  to  "settle,"  as  the 
unhappy  phrase  puts  it,  in  any  crowded  parish. 
For  his  parish  he  had  chosen  half  a  State,  and 
for  his  pulpit  he  should  take  a  wagon  with  a 
horse  who  was  not  afraid  of  up  hill  and  down 
dale.  He  thought  that,  if  he  stopped  over  night 
in  some  household  where  there  were  half  a 
dozen  children,  or  if  he  held  a  meeting  some 
Thursday  afternoon  in  an  old  schoolhouse  which 
the  town  had  abandoned,  he  might  get  into  such 
touch  with  the  people  of  Sodom  or  Hell  Corner 
as  we  gentlemen  who  are  studying  about  the 
Carpocratian  Heresy  in  the  fifth  story  of  the 
Arbella  Hotel  might  never  meet. 

When  some  Brainerd  shall  fit  out  such  a 
wagon,  and  harness  the  horse  which  belongs  to 
it,  and  find  his  way  from  one  "gore"  to  another, 
speaking  in  every  language  to  the  Parthians  and 

[  120] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


Mesopotamians  who  have  made  their  homes 
there,  we  shall  hear  gradually  less  and  less  of 
the  infamies  of  the  hill  towns  or  of  the  crimes  of 
Hell  Corner.  Such  missions  are,  perhaps,  not 
for  large  missionary  societies;  but  they  are  mis- 
sions which  godly  men  and  godly  women  could 
undertake  in  a  summer  vacation.  Indeed,  they 
need  no  other  commission  for  such  enterprises 
but  that  which  the  Saviour  gave  them  in  His  last 
interview  with  His  disciples. 

CHARITY  CORPORATIONS. 

THE  State  Board  of  Charities  of  Massa- 
chusetts has  just  printed  a  very  curious 
pamphlet,  which  contains  the  reports 
of  four  hundred  and  twenty-one  char- 
itable societies  which  owe  their  corporate  exist- 
ence to  the  State. 

The  fact  that  these  are  charitable  societies 
enables  them  to  live  along  without  paying  taxes 
on  the  personal  property  which  they  use  in  their 
affairs.  And  yet,  with  the  happy-go-lucky  indif- 
ference to  statistics  which  is  deeply  ingrained  in 
what  are  called  the  Anglo-Saxon  races,  it  is  only 
lately  that  these  societies  have  been  told  to  send 
any  reports  to  the  government  to  which  they  owe 
their  life.  Philanthropists  have  a  bad  reputation, 
which  they  do  not  deserve,  of  being  unbusiness- 

[121] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


like.  There  is  just  foundation  enough  for  error 
here  in  the  fact  that  there  are  some  moony  sec- 
retaries, and  a  few  moony  treasurers.  Twenty- 
two  of  four  hundred  and  forty-three  corpora- 
tions made  no  report  last  year  after  the  new  stat- 
ute had  told  them  they  must.  But  three  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  have  made  reports  now  which 
are  fairly  accurate  and  complete. 

I  am  afraid  that  most  people  here  will  be  sur- 
prised when  they  know  that  in  the  State  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, with  a  population  of  2,805,346,  in  the 
year  1900,  at  the  end  of  the  year  1901,  325,496 
people  were  "beneficiaries"  of  291  corporations. 
But  this  surprise  should  be  mitigated  by  the  inti- 
mation that  many  of  these  beneficiaries  are  count- 
ed a  great  many  times  in  this  total.  For  instance, 
an  out-of-door  hospital  patient  or  a  "dispensary" 
patient  would  be  counted  every  time  he  applied 
for  relief,  and  the  total  is  swelled  just  so  far  as 
he  makes  frequent  applications.  In  some  cases 
the  beneficiaries  do  not  reside  in  the  State,  but 
these  must  be  an  insignificant  number  compared 
with  those  who  do.  The  reader  will  observe 
that  there  are  one  hundred  and  fifty-two  more 
charitable  corporations  which  do  not  give  any 
report  of  the  number  of  beneficiaries.  Now,  the 
whole  population  is  a  little  more  than  three 
millions.  My  own  theory  in  life  is  that  every 
[122] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


one  of  us  is  a  beneficiary  of  everybody  else.  If 
this  is  so,  the  particular  figure  of  325,496  is 
rather  a  matter  of  curiosity.  But  it  is  interest- 
ing as  showing  how  wide  is  the  range  in  which 
philanthropy  is  admitted  to  do  its  duty  in  Mas- 
sachusetts. 

One  of  our  thoroughly  sensible  and  thorough- 
ly liberal  Boston  merchants  made  a  will,  some 
twenty  years  ago,  in  which  he  left  a  very  large 
sum  of  money  to  be  distributed  in  charities  by 
his  executors.  He  affixed  two  conditions  to  the 
gifts  to  charitable  societies,  i.  The  executors 
were  to  give  nothing  to  societies  whose  officers 
earned  their  living  by  carrying  on  its  enterprises. 
2.  No  money  was  to  be  given  to  societies  which 
made  more  paupers  than  they  relieved.  There 
was  something  which  seemed  a  little  cynical  in 
the  latter  provision,  but  it  is  not  unnecessary. 
Dr.  Chalmers  is  on  record  as  having  said  that, 
when  you  have  a  philanthropic  association  well 
at  work,  the  best  thing  you  can  do  is  to  destroy 
it  and  begin  all  over  again.  And  one  sometimes 
groans  in  spirit  when  he  finds  that  a  set  of  jots 
and  tittles  have  been  crowded  in  upon  the  origi- 
nal purpose  of  a  charitable  foundation,  showing 
that  there  are  excellent  formal  reasons  why  it 
should  not  do  the  thing  that  it  was  meant  to  do; 
as  when  the  society  for  providing  wooden  legs 

[ 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


can  pay  no  money  for  a  cork  leg  or  vice  versa. 
Because  such  provisions  as  these  seem  necessary 
sometimes,  one  examines  such  a  report  as  the 
State  has  now  published  with  a  good  deal  of 
interest.* 

It  seems  to  me  that  this  report  is,  on  the  whole, 
satisfactory.  That  is  to  say,  it  shows  a  very 
large  amount  of  genuine  and  generous  public 
work  which  thousands  and  thousands  of  quiet 
people  are  carrying  forward  from  no  motive  at 
all  but  that  of  helping  those  who  are  in  need. 
Take,  for  instance,  such  a  report  as  this:  "Im- 
migrants' Home.  To  protect  young  and  friend- 
less girls  arriving  on  the  Cunard  and  Dominion 
Lines."  Here  are  eight  hundred  girls  cared 
for  by  the  kindness  and  thought  of  a  few  public- 
spirited  women,  no  one  of  whom  is  paid  a  cent, 
who  saw  the  necessity  of  some  organized  care 
which  could  not  be  attended  to  by  any  individual 
effort. 

The  charge  is  sometimes  made  with  regard  to 
a  particular  locality  that  it  is  "over-charitied." 
I  have  myself  known  occasions  where  this  charge 
was  true,  but  the  danger  is  much  more  apt  to  be 
the  other  way.  "As  it  seems  to  me,"  the  real 
danger  comes  from  red  tape.  The  worship  of 

*The  American  Bible  Society  thinks  itself  "bound"  not 
to  print  the  best  English  version  of  the  Bible! 

["4] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


statistics,  the  desire  to  have  So-and-so  appear 
well  on  the  annual  report,  brings  in  the  greatest 
temptation.  You  establish  a  home  for  old 
women.  You  establish  it  because  old  women 
are  apt  to  be  a  little  fussy,  and  there  are  especial 
difficulties  in  the  care  of  them.  Then,  after  five 
years,  you  go  to  your  Home  to  inquire  if  there 
is  a  place  for  Mrs.  A.  or  Mrs.  B.,  to  find  that 
the  rules  of  the  society  are  such  that,  unless  Mrs. 
A.  or  Mrs.  B.  are  agreeable  people,  whose  soci- 
ety will  be  pleasant  to  the  manager  and  inmates 
of  the  Home,  they  cannot  be  received.  You 
turn  away,  and  you  say  that  that  town  is  over- 
charitied;  but  it  is  not  over-charitied.  All  that 
has  happened  is  that  a  little  bit  of  red  tape  has 
worked  into  the  machinery,  and  the  results  are 
not  all  that  could  have  been  expected. 

The  State  Board  of  Charities  has  assumed  a 
very  important  duty,  which  ought  to  have  been 
attended  to  long  before,  in  collecting  these  re- 
ports. For  a  beginning  the  work  has  been  very 
well  done,  and  the  public  is  very  much  indebted 
to  somebody  who  did  it.  The  Board  of  Chari- 
ties will  be  entirely  supported  if  it  will  carry  the 
enterprise  further  by  investigating  properly  any 
one  of  these  private  organizations  with  regard  to 
which  any  complaint  is  made,  in  proper  form. 
The  organizations  are  all  creatures  of  the  State, 

[125] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


and,  in  general,  their  officers  remember  that  they 
are.  Every  charitable  organization  which  has 
a  right  to  existence  ought  to  admit  of  the  widest 
publicity  in  its  affairs,  showing  that  the  rights  of 
individuals  are  not  sacrificed.  The  publication 
of  this  report  takes  away  the  last  objection  which 
can  be  made  to  the  exemption  of  the  personal 
property  of  such  institutions  from  taxation. 

People  should  be  encouraged  in  rendering 
service  to  the  State.  For  there  is  no  danger 
that  people  will  be  too  unselfish.  If  a  man  wants 
to  put  up  a  statue,  let  him  put  it  up,  and  do  not 
tax  the  statue  when  it  is  up.  If  people  want  to 
worship  God  in  some  new  fashion,  let  them  wor- 
ship Him.  Do  not  be  particular  in  inquiring 
whether  they  worship  three  persons  in  one  God 
or  whether  they  worship  one  person  in  one  God. 
But  this  does  not  mean  that  people  may  save  a 
piece  of  property  for  twenty  or  thirty  years,  and 
nurse  it  along  without  paying  any  taxes  for  it, 
under  the  pretence  that  they  are  maintaining 
religious  institutions  there,  and  then  sell  this  real 
estate  as  a  matter  of  speculation.  If  the  State 
exempts  them  from  pecuniary  taxation,  it  does 
so  under  the  supposition  that  they  are  rendering 
a  difficult  service  or  a  larger  service  to  the  State 
in  some  other  way.  The  same  rule  is  to  be  ap- 
plied to  every  charitable  organization. 
[126] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


INDUSTRIAL  EDUCATION. 

MORE  than  a  generation  of  men  has 
passed  since  the  thoughtful  attention 
of  people  in  this  country  was  turned 
to  the  necessity  of  using  the  public 
school  system  for  the  training  of  the  hands  of 
boys  and  girls,  as  well  as  the  training  of  their 
brains. 

In  Boston,  where  these  words  are  printed, 
some  successful  effort  was  made  more  than  half 
a  century  ago  to  introduce  sewing  in  the  regular 
curriculum  of  the  girls'  schools.  The  profes- 
sional schoolmasters  disliked  it,  and  did  their  best 
to  discountenance  the  plan.  But  it  was  too  sen- 
sible to  be  thrown  overboard,  and  in  the  Boston 
"grammar  schools"  there  is  now  quite  an  effi- 
cient system  for  teaching  girls  to  sew.  A  half- 
hearted and  partial  system  was  introduced,  after 
some  years,  by  which  such  boys  as  chose  could 
learn  to  use  the  hand-saw  or  the  hammer.  But  the 
seventy  head-masters  in  general  frowned  upon 
this ;  the  schoolhouses  were  not  built  for  any  such 
system,  and  in  practice  it  now  amounts  to  very 
little.  The  best  result  of  any  effort  in  Boston 
for  what  is  called  industrial  education  may  be 
seen  in  what  is  called  the  Public  School  for 
[  127] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


the  Mechanic  Arts,  an  institution  admirably 
equipped  and  well  maintained. 

The  credit  for  the  earliest  work  in  establish- 
ing such  institutions  in  Boston  is  to  be  given  in 
the  first  instance  to  Samuel  P.  Ruggles,  the  in- 
ventor of  the  Ruggles  printing  press;  to  Dr. 
Cyrus  A.  Bartol,  and  to  Rev.  George  L.  Chancy. 
It  is,  indeed,  interesting  and  pathetic  to  recollect 
that  Mr.  Ruggles  offered  to  give  the  city  a 
machine  shop  equipped  with  everything  neces- 
sary for  a  school  of  machinists,  and  that  the 
aldermen  of  that  day  declined  the  offer! 

In  Chicago,  an  admirable  movement,  well 
endowed  and  well  maintained  by  the  great  Com- 
mercial Club  of  Chicago,  taught  us  all  a  very 
valuable  lesson.  A  large  and  well-appointed 
school  was  established  for  boys  and  young  men, 
in  which  half  the  school  time  was  given  to  train- 
ing the  hand  to  the  study  of  drawing,  and  to  the 
use  of  tools.  It  wa's  thought,  and  it  proves,  that 
the  habit  of  observation  thus  developed  is  an 
important  help  on  the  literary  side.  I  may  say 
that  for  education  itself,  which  is  so  much  more 
than  instruction,  the  accuracy  required  in  all 
good  handiwork  helps  in  the  training  for  perfec- 
tion of  man's  moral  nature.  So,  as  far  as  I 
know,  there  is  no  better  illustration  of  this  happy 
combination  of  literary  education  with  what  is 
[128] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


called  industrial  education  than  can  be  seen  in 
the  great  schools  of  the  Hampton  Institute.  I 
have  seen  many  successful  enterprises  of  the  same 
sort  in  the  middle  and  western  States,  notably 
the  industrial  school  at  Lafayette,  Indiana,  and 
the  machine  shops  of  Cornell  University. 

The  late  Mr.  Auchmuty,  a  philanthropist  in 
the  city  of  New  York,  established  the  largest 
and  most  comprehensive  institution  for  the  train- 
ing of  workmen  which  we  have  seen  in  America. 
I  think  there  is  nothing  like  it  in  Europe.  It 
is,  I  believe,  open  only  in  the  evening.  It  has 
been  maintained  since  the  death  of  the  founder 
by  the  interest  of  a  fund  which  he  left  for  the 
purpose.  The  several  classes  are  intended  chief- 
ly for  young  men  who  are  engaged  in  other  pur- 
suits in  the  day  time,  and  come  to  learn  their 
trades  in  the  evening. 

There  are  classes  in  carpentry,  in  plumbing, 
in  bricklaying,  in  plastering  "and  stucco-work,  in 
painting,  in  carving.  The  pupils  pay  for  their 
instruction,  and  the  fund  is  charged  with  only 
what  may  be  called  the  general  expenses  of  the 
institution. 

All  such  enterprises,  in  which  the  unskilled 
laborer  is  promoted  into  a  skilled  workman,  may 
be  classified  as  belonging  to  the  American  system 
of  manual  instruction. 

[  129] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


There  is  no  lack  of  industrial  schools  on  the 
continent  of  Europe.  But  I  have  met  with 
hardly  any  report — I  do  not  remember  any — of 
efforts  to  teach  pupils  how  to  use  their  hands, 
excepting  in  "institutions,"  so  called,  of  punish- 
ment or  of  charity.  The  industrial  school  of  the 
continent  of  Europe  is  rather  a  school  for  the 
education  of  managers  or  foremen  for  the  indus- 
tries. It  is  taken  for  granted  that  what  is  left  of 
the  apprentice  system,  or  some  substitute  for  it, 
in  the  workshops  will  give  to  the  artisan  who 
has  to  use  his  hands  all  the  training  which  he 
will  require  until  he  can  train  himself. 

Simply  these  industrial  schools  are  intended 
to  train  the  middle  men  in  manufacturing  and 
engineering — the  men  who  are  to  direct  the 
workmen,  so  called,  or  the  laborers.  It  is  not 
popular  education  in  any  fair  sense.  It  is  the 
education  of  squires,  who  may  be  knights  or 
noblemen.  It  is  in  no  sense  the  education  of 
the  people. 


There  is  unfortunately  a  tendency  among 
those  who  teach,  not  unnatural,  indeed,  to  adopt 
such  feudal  systems,  which  are,  indeed,  European 
systems,  in  American  institutions  for  technical 
education.  I  might  say  this,  indeed,  of  all  insti- 
tutions for  higher  training.  That  wise  leader  in 

[  130] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


education,  Dr.  James  Walker,  said  to  me  forty 
years  ago  that  the  most  difficult  thing  in  the 
management  of  a  college  was  to  persuade,  or  in 
any  way  compel,  the  professors  of  most  experi- 
ence or  wisdom  to  take  the  charge  of  freshmen. 
He  said  that  the  usual  complaint  was  well  found- 
ed, which  says  that  the  freshmen,  the  newcomers, 
are  generally  assigned  to  tutors  who  are  them- 
selves inexperienced  in  their  business.  I  think 
most  college  professors  would  tell  me  that  the 
occupation  most  disliked  is  the  reading,  criticiz- 
ing and  correcting  of  themes  or  compositions  in 
whatever  form.  It  is  undoubtedly  more  agree- 
able to  conduct  classes  of  young  people  who 
know  something,  and  have  been  already  dragged 
through  the  elementary  stages — by  somebody. 

Here  are  two  causes,  each  of  them  carrying 
a  good  deal  of  force,  which  tend  to  the  injury 
of  the  technical  schools  of  this  country.  Our 
large  business  here  is  with  the  training  of  the 
sovereign,  that  is,  of  the  people.  We  can  trust 
the  "foreman,"  "manager,"  and  other  directors 
to  train  themselves  to  the  business  of  managing, 
if  only  they  know  themselves* how  to  do  what 
they  will  have  to  order  done  by  their  subordi- 
nates. If  we  have  a  nation  of  well-trained  arti- 
sans there  is  no  danger  but  we  shall  have  enough 
of  them  fit  to  lead  the  others  when  the  time 

[131] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


comes.  The  late  Mr.  Roberts,  the  admirable 
president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  was 
fond  of  saying  that  the  first  step  in  his  "pro- 
motion" was  taken  the  day  when  he  was  in  the 
boiler  of  a  locomotive,  pounding  skilfully  on  a 
refractory  rivet.  He  could  not  have  done  this 
but  that  he  had  been  trained  in  the  admirable 
school  for  apprentices  of  the  road,  where  young 
men  are  taken  through  all  the  several  duties  of 
the  several  shops. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  have,  not  long  since, 
addressed  an  agricultural  and  mechanical  school 
at  work  under  the  National  Land  Grant,  where 
only  two  young  men  were  to  spend  the  summer 
in  farm  work;  and  both  of  these  were  Japanese 
students.  I  doubt  whether  there  is  a  hammer 
or  a  screw-driver  left  of  the  apparatus  for  the 
mechanic  arts  which  was  once  in  use  by  the  Tech- 
nological Institute  in  Boston. 

The  directors  of  some  of  the  trade  unions 
pursue  a  false  policy,  which  if  adopted  more 
generally  would  prove  disastrous.  They  dis- 
courage trade  schools,  with  the  short-sighted  wish 
of  keeping  their  profession  conveniently  small. 
Most  of  them  have  been  trained  in  Europe,  and 
by  some  short-sighted  impolicy  by  which  they 
would  be  very  glad  to  slam  the  door  in  the  face 
of  those  who  follow  them,  they  are  tempted  to 

[  132] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


shut  out  boys  who  want  training  in  the  arts  which 
these  directors  themselves  possess. 

All  which  is  an  effort  in  face  of  the  American 
purpose,  a  purpose  which  has  carried  with  it  suc- 
cess indescribable.  That  purpose  requires  the 
best  and  most  practical  education  for  everybody 
everywhere. 

OLD  AGE  PENSIONS. 

MR.  JOSEPH  CHAMBERLAIN  has 
been  called  the  Alva  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.     This  means  that 
he  will  always  be  held  responsible 
for  the  cruelties  of  the  English  administration  of 
South  Africa,  as  Alva  is  held  responsible  in  his- 
tory for  the  cruelties  which  the  Spanish  kings 
inflicted  on  the  Dutch  ancestors  of  the  Burghers. 
Mr.    Chamberlain    is   now    going   to    South 
Africa,  it  is  said  on  an  errand  of  love.     It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  he  may  present  himself  in  history 
as  a  converted  Alva. 

This  thing  ought  to  be  said  for  him,  that  he 
has  held  loyally  to  the  proposal  for  taking  care 
of  old  men  and  old  women  who  are  in  need.  He 
proposes  methods  more  decent,  not  to  say  more 
Christian,  than  the  Poor  Laws  of  England  as 
now  administered  provide. 

[  133  ] 


VE,   THE  PEOPLE" 


When  you  speak  to  anybody  of  "Old  Age 
Pension,"  if  he  knows  anything  about  it,  he  goes 
back  to  Joseph  Chamberlain's  loyal  adhesion  to 
this  cause  for  many  years  past.  But  when  Amer- 
icans, who  are  used  to  taking  short  cuts  across 
pastures,  examine  the  English  plans,  they  seem 
terribly  intricate. 

Indeed,  you  are  apt  to  lay  the  thing  down 
and  say  this  may  do  for  a  tight  little  island 
where  you  can  throw  an  apple  from  one  end  of 
it  to  the  other,  but  it  will  never  do  for  us. 

That  is  true  enough,  but,  all  the  same,  we  are 
a  humane  people,  we  are  a  people  respectful  to 
the  aged,  and  we  must  work  out  our  own  system 
of  taking  care  of  them. 

Mr.  Demarest  Lloyd,  to  whom  we  owe  so 
much,  has  put  on  paper  for  us  the  arrangements 
of  New  Zealand  in  this  affair.  They  are  much 
better  than  the  English  arrangements,  they  are 
much  better  than  our  arrangements,  so  they  are 
much  better  than  Mr.  Chamberlain's  plans  pro- 
pose. But  the  New  Zealand  arrangements  are 
not  American  arrangements. 

Indeed,  it  is  quite  probable  that  each  of  the 
forty-five  States  of  America  will  make  its  own 
plans.  That  is  one  of  the  merits  of  our  system, 
that  we  do  not  have  to  receive  cut-and-dried 
stereotyped  plans  from  any  central  headquarters. 

[134] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


The  trouble  with  Mr.  Chamberlain's  plans  is 
that  they  involve  that  distinction  which  all 
feudal  nations  enjoy  so  much  between  the  highest 
class  and  lowest  class,  and  the  upper  middle  class 
and  the  lower  middle  class,  and  the  middle  lower 
class  and  the  lower  higher  class,  and  the  higher 
lower  class  and  the  middle  middle  class. 

This  sort  of  distinction  makes  an  American 
very  sick  when  he  reads  about  it,  and  no  wonder. 
In  any  arrangements  which  we  make  here,  it 
nust  be  understood  that  we  belong  to  one  class, 
and  that  a  very  high  class. 

It  is  the  class  of  the  living  children  of  the 
living  God.  We  observe  that  this  living  God 
takes  care  of  the  upper  middle  class  in  just  the 
same  way  in  which  He  takes  care  of  the  lower 
middle  class,  and  we  do  not  propose  to  discrim- 
inate any  more  than  He  does. 

To  any  one  to  whom  He  gives  water  and  sun- 
light and  His  Holy  Spirit,  we  propose  to  give 
an  old-age  pension. 

It  is  not  long  since  I  was  making  a  speech 
before  a  set  of  life-insurance  men.  That  means 
a  very  intelligent  sort  of  people.  I  told  them, 
to  their  surprise  I  think,  that  every  man  in  Mas- 
sachusetts who  had  lived  in  Massachusetts  since 
he  was  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  who  had  lived 
to  the  age  of  seventy,  had  earned  his  old-age 
pension.  [  J35  1 


'WE,   THE  PEOPLE* 


When  they  took  out  their  pencils  and  made 
the  calculations  on  their  shirt  cuffs,  they  found 
out  that  this  was  true.  For  we  tax  every  man 
in  Massachusetts  with  a  poll  tax  of  $2  a  year. 

We  begin  when  he  is  eighteen.  By  the  time 
he  is  seventy  he  has  paid  fifty-two  times  multi- 
plied by  two  dollars  into  the  treasury  of  the 
State  of  Massachusetts,  that  is,  $104. 

If  anybody  who  is  fond  of  calculation  will 
work  up  the  compound  interest  on  these  fifty-two 
payments,  he  will  find  to  this  man's  credit  there 
is  a  great  deal  more  than  $104. 

Anybody  who  studies  the  laws  of  mortality 
will  find  out  that  of  one  hundred  men  who  began 
to  pay  their  poll  tax  in  the  year  1850  only  about 
fifteen  men  are  alive  in  1902. 

Those  who  are  alive  may  have  credited  to 
them,  for  their  life-insurance  money,  all  the  taxes 
which  have  been  paid  by  the  other. 

Once  more,  Massachusetts  people  have  a  sort 
of  passion  for  moving  away,  and  when  they  are 
seventy,  if  they  are  in  this  world,  they  turn  up 
in  Hawaii,  or  in  Tokio,  or  in  the  diamond  dig- 
gings of  South  Africa,  or  at  Auckland  in  New 
Zealand. 

Massachusetts  does  not  propose  to  pay  their 
old-age  pensions  there,  and  all  that  they  have 
paid  into  her  State  treasury,  with  all  its  accumu- 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


lations  at  compound  interest,  can  be  credited  to 
the  fund  of  the  old  gentlemen  who  are  still  here. 

My  life-insurance  friends  began  to  listen  to 
me  when  I  got  as  far  as  this.  And  when  they 
went  home  they  took  these  truths  in  their  pipes 
for  smoking,  and  so  they  found  out  that  this 
was  no  almsgiving  which  we  propose  when  we 
talk  of  old-age  settlements. 

It  is  simply  returning  to  men  what  each  re- 
quires for  befriending  the  Commonwealth  in  the 
days  when  Massachusetts  was  not  as  strong  as  it 
is  now. 

They  did  not  know  it,  perhaps,  but  they  were 
paying  money  to  a  larger  insurance  company 
than  any  which  has  been  separately  incorporated, 
and  the  name  of  that  company  is  the  Common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts. 

THE  BOSTON  FORUM. 

I    HAD  the  pleasure  of  making  the  first  ad- 
dress before  the  Forum,  as  Mr.  George 
Litchfield  calls  the  Sunday  afternoon  as- 
sembly which  is  to  consider  from  the  peo- 
ple's point  of  view  the  conditions  of  social  order, 
not  so  much  historically  as  prophetically.     That 
is  to  say,  the  Forum  seems  to  exist  for  the  pur- 
pose of  seeing  how  Boston  can  be  made  a  better 

[  137] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


Boston,  and  Massachusetts  a  better  Massachu- 
setts. Mr.  Benjamin  F.  Mills  directed  a  similar 
meeting  at  the  Parker  Memorial  in  the  year  when 
he  was  with  us  here  in  Boston.  The  new  Forum 
is  to  hold  its  meetings  in  Morgan  Chapel,  and 
Morgan  Chapel  could  not  be  better  introduced 
into  the  public  of  its  neighborhood  than  by  thus 
lending  itself  to  the  public  spirit  of  those  who 
are  interested  in  social  improvement.  What 
the  Forum  hopes  for  and  offers  is  an  opportunity 
for  men  and  women  to  speak  who  take  a  real 
interest  in  the  improvement  of  our  social  life, 
and  who  can  discuss  together  the  methods  for 
its  improvement. 

We  had  a  very  interesting  assembly  at  the 
opening  meeting  of  people  who  are  in  earnest 
in  the  various  proposals  for  the  improvement  of 
life,  as  the  new  century  looks  forward.  I  had 
been  asked  to  make  the  opening  address;  and  I 
selected  the  subject,  intricate  and  difficult  at  the 
best,  of  "Municipal  Ownership."  I  prepared 
myself  as  well  as  I  could  to  speak,  and  had  the 
careful  and  thoughtful  attention  of  an  intelligent 
audience. 

I  am  not  writing  with  the  least  feeling  of 
complaint.  But  it  was  interesting  to  me  to  ob- 
serve that  in  the  speeches  which  followed  mine, 
all  of  them  by  persons  who  spoke  extremely  well, 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


hardly  any  allusion,  if  any,  was  made  to  the  sub- 
ject assigned  for  the  meeting  of  the  day.  We 
had  a  charming  poem  on  the  life  work  of  the 
Saviour.  We  had  a  very  interesting  temperance 
appeal,  and  we  had  a  good  statement  of  the  po- 
sition of  women  in  the  matter  of  universal  suf- 
rrage.  We  had  a  petition  for  the  relaxation  of 
the  tariff  on  coal.  But  the  one  subject  of  the 
time,  which  was  scarcely  alluded  to  by  any  one 
but  myself,  was  the  subject  assigned  for  the 
meeting.  This  omission  was  not  unnatural  in 
the  first  meeting,  particularly  in  a  meeting  or 
assembly  which  is  all  but  pledged  not  to  give 
itself  over  to  the  cut-and-dried  methods  of  politi- 
cal causes.  I  only  allude  to  this  circumstance 
because  it  illustrates  the  difficulty  of  all  such 
attempts. 

I  have  lived  to  see  a  dozen  such  attempts  in 
Boston  which  have  failed,  and  I  am  very  desirous 
that  the  Forum  shall  not  fail  in  the  same  way. 
If  a  railroad  company  should  call  its  stockhold- 
ers together  to  consider  whether  they  would  or 
would  not  build  a  branch  railroad,  and  they 
should  give  the  whole  time  to  the  consideration 
of  new  patents  for  engines  and  new  fuel,  and  the 
discussion  of  the  change  of  the  old  road-bed, 
whether  in  stockholders'  meetings  or  directors' 
meetings,  why,  that  railroad  company  would  go 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


to  the  dogs,  and  that  very  soon.  There  is  not 
a  legislative  meeting  in  the  country  which  does 
not  hold  their  speakers  very  strictly  on  any  occa- 
sion to  the  subject  which  is  before  the  house. 

If  anybody  cares  anything  about  history,  the 
failure  of  the  French  Revolution  at  its  very 
opening  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  States  Gen- 
eral and  the  National  Assembly  declined  to  gov- 
ern themselves  by  such  rules.  Everybody  who 
wanted  to  speak  spoke ;  and  he  spoke  about  any- 
thing that  interested  him.  The  consequence 
was  that  the  National  Assembly  went  to  its  own 
place,  and  one  looks  back  upon  its  history  with 
little  more  than  regret. 

Now,  if  the  Forum  will  highly  determine,  at 
an  early  meeting,  that  at  successive  meetings  it 
will  stick  to  the  text  of  each,  it  will  elevate  itself 
above  the  plane  of  many  such  organizations  as 
have  gone  before  it,  and  have  gone  where  the 
French  National  Assembly  went. 

There  are  plenty  of  subjects  where  the  people 
interested  can  bring  forward  very  curious  infor- 
mation, and  where  great  objects  will  really  be 
set  forward  by  careful  discussion.  It  will  be 
an  excellent  thing,  for  instance,  if  a  dozen  fathers 
and  mothers  of  children  now  in  the  public 
schools  would  tell  us  how  far  the  children  profit 
by  what  they  are  taught,  and  where  the  failures 

[ 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


are,  as  they  appear  to  parents.  We  hear  a  good 
deal  said  about  the  absence  of  moral  instruction 
or  moral  education  in  the  schools.  I  have  never 
seen  anywhere  any  statement  by  ten  persons  as 
to  how  much  their  children  gained  or  how  much 
they  lost,  from  the  effect,  moral  or  immoral,  of 
the  public  schools.  Is  an  intermingling  of  all 
classes  injurious  or  not  injurious?  Is  it  possible 
or  not  to  introduce  on  Saturday  afternoons  the 
religious  teachers  of  the  several  churches  for 
the  religious  instruction  of  the  pupils  in  those 
schools?  That  was  the  system  in  the  State  of 
New  York  for  many  years.  It  has  been  a  good 
deal  discussed  by  people  who  had  no  children. 
What  was  really  thought  of  it,  or  what  is 
thought  of  it  now  by  people  who  have  chil- 
dren? 

Perhaps  I  may  venture  on  another  piece  of 
advice.  The  Forum  will  find  that  just  in  pro- 
portion as  it  has  people  speak  who  know  what 
they  are  talking  about,  just  in  that  proportion 
will  its  meetings  meet  the  popular  need.  I  said 
one  day  to  a  person  high  in  rank  in  the  public 
eye  that  I  observed  with  interest  such  and  such 
a  statement  on  a  very  important  matter  of  social 
economy.  It  had  been  made  by  my  friend  in  a 
large  public  assembly.  I  asked  what  was  the 
authority  for  this  valuable  statement,  and  she 

[141] 


,  THE  PEOPLE' 


said  in  reply,  "Oh,  did  I  not  see  it  in  a  news- 
paper somewhere?"  Now  it  is  that  sort  of  talk 
which  brings  public  meetings  into  the  contempt 
with  which  they  are  held  even  in  republican 
communities.  It  has  come  round  to  this:  that 
the  public  thinks  that  men,  and,  still  more, 
women,  say  things  from  the  platform  which  they 
would  not  say  if  they  were  testifying  in  court. 
The  impression  has  gained  ground  that  talking 
to  Buncombe  is  one  thing  and  talking  as  a  person 
with  responsibilities  of  government  upon  him  is 
another.  If  at  the  present  moment  one  could 
get  the  real  statement  of  fact  which  twenty-five 
thoughtful  leaders  of  Boston  could  give  us  as 
to  what  is  called  Sunday  closing  in  Boston,  that 
statement  would  be  of  the  very  first  value.  But 
it  is  a  statement  which  must  be  made  by  persons 
personally  acquainted  with  the  results  of  the 
present  legislation,  and  persons  who  know  what 
is  and  what  is  not  the  custom  of  the  police,  by 
persons  who  know  what  appears  at  the  municipal 
courts  on  Monday  mornings.  And  one  has  to 
confess  rather  sadly  that,  if  a  public  meeting 
were  called  at  Faneuil  Hall  to  consider  such  a 
proposal  as  that  just  now  made  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  we  should  have  very  few  facts 
brought  to  us.  We  should  have  the  theories 
brought  to  us  of  bad  people  and  good  people. 

[142] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


But  we  should  leave  the  meeting  with  little  more 
information  than  we  had  when  it  began. 

Our  friends  of  the  Daily  Argus  and  the  Daily 
Thunderer  will  say  at  this  point  that  a  vigilant 
press  with  its  thousand  eyes,  which  see  every- 
thing, gives  all  the  necessary  information  on  such 
subjects.  Like  every  other  practical  reader,  I 
have  to  observe  with  regret  that  this  is  exactly 
what  the  Argus-eyed  press  does  not  choose  to  do. 

On  the  other  hand,  my  newspaper  to-day 
quotes  with  approbation  Jules  Verne's  witty 
statement,  that  the  historical  novel  will  die  out 
in  the  next  half  century  because  the  daily  press 
will  have  taken  its  place  so  completely.  The 
editor  does  not  see  the  humor  of  the  expression, 
nor  its  bitter  satire.  The  statement  of  a  leading 
New  York  journalist  corroborates  exactly  Mr. 
Jules  Verne's  bon  mot.  "Newspapers,"  said  he, 
"are  not  meant  for  history." 

THE  LARGER  WORLD. 

WHEN  poor  Judge  Sewall  hanged  the 
witches,      and     when     Governor 
Phipps  slapped  the  sea-captain  in 
the  face,  Massachusetts  was  a  clus- 
ter of  little  towns  hugging  the  shore  of  an  ocean 
which  even  seamen  did  not  like  to  cross  in  winter. 

[143] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


As  the  frosts  cut  down  the  corn,  and  the  ground 
began  to  freeze,  the  people  of  these  hamlets  had 
less  and  less  to  think  about  and  to  talk  about. 
We  must  not  blame  them  too  much  if  they  looked 
in  when  they  should  have  looked  out;  no,  nor 
if  they  went  crazy  in  consequence  of  their  count- 
ing their  own  heart-throbs,  inquiring  about  their 
own  sins,  or  studying  the  action  of  their  own 
machinery. 

A  careful  and  wise  observer  of  New  England 
life,  in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  used  to 
say  that  the  missionary  movement  which  began 
with  Judson's  enthusiasm  should  be  gratefully 
remembered  by  us  here,  not  simply  for  the  good 
it  did  in  India,  but  by  its  enlargement  of  our  life 
at  home.  It  was  a  good  thing  to  have  a  map 
of  India  or  of  Asia  Minor  hang  up  in  the  back 
part  of  the  pulpit.  It  was  a  good  thing  then, 
and  it  is  a  good  thing  now,  to  have  people's  eyes 
and  ears  and  hearts  and  hands  occupied  by  some- 
thing larger  than  their  own  working  machinery. 
The  historian  of  the  century  cannot  fail  to  see 
that,  side  by  side  with  such  interest  in  other  lands 
thus  exited,  there  came  in  the  healthy  gospel  of 
self-forgetfulness.  Boy  or  girl  learned  what  the 
Saviour  meant  when  He  rebuked  the  selfishness 
of  those  who  were  satisfied  in  trying  to  save  their 
own  lives.  It  would  not  be  dangerous  to  say 

[  144] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


that  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  has  done  more  in  this 
way  to  uplift  the  religion  of  America  than  its 
must  successful  apostles  have  done  to  uplift  the 
followers  of  Buddha. 

Who  reads  thoughtfully  the  sad  story  of  the 
victims  of  the  witchcraft  madness  does  not  won- 
der that  a  few  hundred  people  went  mad.  The 
wonder  is  rather  that  they  did  not  all  go  mad. 
The  fishing  fleet  came  in  from  the  Banks,  and 
the  boats  were  dismantled.  No  winter  fishing 
then.  Heavy  snowstorms  banked  up  the  high- 
ways, and  communication  was  cut  off,  perhaps, 
even  between  village  and  village.  An  "arrival" 
from  Ipswich  brought  Salem  several  days  later 
news  from  that  hamlet,  as  an  "arrival"  in  Bos- 
ton used  to  bring  us  the  news  of  Europe.  When 
people  came  together  on  Sundays,  the  oracle  in 
the  pulpit  delivered  a  melancholy  and  oppressive 
message.  They  all  deserved  to  be  damned, 
were  damned,  in  short.  There  was  but  a  chance 
that  a  few  of  them  might  escape  on  the  raft  of 
which  he  told  them.  Every  man  and  woman 
was  thus  set  on  the  torture  of  self-examination. 

"There  is  a  point  I  long  to  know, 
Oft  it  causes  anxious  thought, 
Do  I  love  the  Lord  or  no? 
Am  I  His,  or  am  I  not?" 

Who  can  wonder  if  one  or  another  of  the 


,  THE  PEOPLE' 


poor  creatures  came  out  in  the  belief  that  they 
were  sold  to  the  devil,  and  confessed  that  they 
were,  even  to  the  preachers  who  had  told  them 
so  already? 

I  like  to  contrast  such  introspection,  which  one 
would  call  "damnable"  if  that  word  were  toler- 
ated in  good  society,  with  an  experience  of  my 
own  in  travelling  in  the  less  settled  parts  of  our 
country.  I  met  an  intelligent  stranger,  who  did 
not  even  tell  me  her  name.  She  had  a  right  to 
speak  to  me,  because  of  the  public  errand  which 
I  had  in  hand.  Would  I  make  an  appointment 
with  her?  which,  of  course,  I  was  glad  to  do. 
I  had  professional  experience  enough  to  guess 
that  she  wanted  to  gain  my  advice  on  some  mat- 
ter of  self-discipline — advice  which  it  would  be 
my  duty,  indeed  my  privilege,  to  give. 

So  I  withdrew  from  the  group  with  whom  I 
was,  so  soon  as  I  might,  to  accompany  her  on  a 
walk  in  which  she  might  open  her  question  to 
me. 

So  soon  as  we  were  out  of  the  ear-shot  of 
others  she  proposed  her  question. 

What  did  I  think  was  the  most  important 
result  in  history  of  the  fall  of  Constantinople  in 
1453?  This  was  the  question. 

I  think  the  story  is  worth  repeating  for  the 
illustration  it  gives  of  the  larger  life  of  to-day. 
[146] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


I  have  had  the  curiosity,  as  I  write,  to  look  in 
the  census  at  the  population  of  the  hamlet  in 
which  she  lived.  There  were  within  the  range 
of  forty  square  miles  only  one  thousand  and 
ninety-six  persons  of  all  ages  and  conditions. 
Yes.  But  in  that  forty  square  miles  there  were 
children  of  God  who  had  learned  to  share 
His  infinite  interests.  They  had  their  reading 
clubs,  their  library,  their  frequent  meetings  in 
which  they  asked  and  answered  questions  which 
very  likely  extended  as  far  as  Arcturus,  which 
ran  back  beyond  1453,  and  ran  forward  who 
shall  say  how  much  further  ?  And,  because  they 
had  such  training,  no  one  of  those  people  was  in- 
quiring whether  Jane  Smith  should  have  bought 
a  new  bonnet  or  re-trimmed  the  old  one,  nor 
the  other  question,  whether  the  inquirer  him- 
self rightly  understood  the  book  of  Revelation 
or  the  ninety-ninth  Proverb. 

Such  suggestions  as  to  the  larger  life  have  an 
important  place  in  these  new  discussions  as  to 
the  enlargement  of  our  Sunday-school  training. 
The  class  of  boys  which  is  restive  when  you  ask 
them  to  follow  the  track  of  Saint  Paul  will  take 
new  interest  when  John  reports  that  the  express- 
man has  brought  him  a  bow  and  arrow  from  an 
Indian.  The  little  boy  who  has  been  snubbed 
at  school  because  he  could  not  give  the  rules  for 

[147] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


dividing  a  vulgar  fraction  into  its  components, 
wakes  up  into  an  intelligent  fellow-worker  with 
God  when  you  tell  him  that  the  box  he  nailed  up 
last  January  came  out  among  some  Eskimos  for 
whom  Dr.  Grenfell  was  caring  at  Ungava. 
The  larger  life  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men 
has  a  stimulus  for  him  which  he  did  not  suspect 
when  he  was  told  that  he  was  the  dunce  of  the 
school. 

THE  PAN-AMERICAN  RAILWAY. 

IN  the  "Reconstruction  of  the  World,"  the 
purpose  is  that  it  may  be  one  world  instead 
of  four  or  five  worlds;  one  America  in- 
stead of  two;  Europe  and  Asia  helping 
each  other,  and  refusing  to  perpetuate  the  old 
Trojan  feud  of  Priam  against  Agamemnon;  one 
Africa,  with  the  Mediterranean  as  close  to  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  as  New  York  is  to  San 
Francisco.  These  three  enterprises  must  be  set 
forward  at  once.  It  is  foolish  to  leave  them  to 
private  speculations  or  the  mere  greed  of  de- 
mand and  supply.  Europe,  for  instance,  which 
needs  relief  on  the  east  for  the  crowded  peas- 
antry, who  ought  to  be  freemen,  and  to  find  food 
on  the  rich  wastes  of  Siberia.  But  it  is  absurd 
to  ask  the  starving  German  peasant  to  "chip  in" 

[148] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


from  his  penury  to  build  the  railway  on  which 
he  and  his  shall  be  carried  to  Siberia. 

Our  part  in  this  business  is  to  create  the  Inter- 
national Railway,  which  shall  carry  all  comers 
and  all  goers  from  Hudson's  Bay  to  Patagonia, 
if  they  choose  to  go  so  far — or,  if  they  choose, 
from  Patagonia  to  Hudson's  Bay. 

As  long  ago  as  the  first  Pan-American  Con- 
gress, the  first  steps  were  taken  for  this  great 
work  of  nations.  The  reports  of  the  engineers 
who  have  been  surveying  the  routes  are  now  in 
most  instances  completed,  and  we  can  speak  with 
more  confidence  of  the  future. 

The  railway  must  be  built  with  four  tracks, 
to  give  assurance  from  the  beginning  that  it  shall 
be  equal  to  all  requisitions.  In  many  instances 
it  will  follow  lines  now  existing,  at  least  at  first. 
But  this  is  no  matter  of  local  corporations,  to 
be  managed  at  the  whim  of  local  politics  or  local 
profit.  It  is  an  enterprise  for  the  benefit  of 
mankind ;  and  the  nations  concerned,  as  they  have 
watched  over  the  beginning,  must  hold  a  com- 
plete control  in  the  daily  management  of  the 
lines. 

The  object  is  the  easier  intercourse  between 
man  and  man.  It  involves  the  better  mutual 
understanding  of  different  races.  In  the  case  of 
the  American  railway,  it  reveals  to  us  of  the 

[  149] 


THE  PEOPLE1 


North  that  of  which  we  know  so  little  of  the 
life  of  the  South.  The  beauty  and  wonder  of 
the  scenery  of  South  America,  the  infinite  abun- 
dance of  the  natural  resources  there,  are  quite 
unknown  to  us  now. 
The  curtain  is  to  rise. 


Take  the  people  who  are  reading  these  words. 
A  quarter  part  of  those  who  are  of  age  have 
travelled  in  Europe  within  the  last  twenty  years. 
But  has  one-twentieth  part  of  these  ever  been 
in  South  America  ?  There  are  mountains  in  the 
Andes  ranges  far  higher  than  the  Alps.  Has 
one  American  seen  Chimborazo  out  of  twenty 
who  have  pictures  of  the  Matterhorn  in  their 
apartment?  Mrs.  Reader  could  take  the  train 
for  Mexico  next  Monday  morning,  and  drive  to 
her  hotel  there  on  Saturday,  without  sullying  a 
white  satin  slipper;  she  need  not  leave  her  palace 
car  more  than  two  or  three  times  on  the  way. 
Yet  Mrs.  Reader  and  Miss  Spellman  and  fifty 
of  their  friends  have  within  the  last  five  years 
spent  a  month  each  in  going  to  Rome  and  back, 
for  one  of  them  who  has  spent  February  in 
Mexico. 

All  this  will  change  when  we  have  our  Inter- 
national Railway. 

If  the  past  is  to  be  repeated,  no  one  need  be 

[150] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


afraid  to  prophesy.  Here  is  an  intelligent  and 
experienced  English  traveller  in  South  America, 
who  is  certain  that  the  basin  of  the  Amazon 
River  is  to  be  the  centre  of  the  world's  civiliza- 
tion, as  the  ^Egean  Sea  was  the  heart  of  an  older 
civilization,  as  the  Mediterranean  was  the  heart 
of  a  later  civilization,  and  as  London,  Paris  and 
Berlin  have  been  the  centres  of  civilization  for  a 
century  or  two  past.* 

I  am  afraid  that  dear  Mrs.  Reader  and  Miss 
Spellman,  perhaps  and  our  old  friend  Mrs.  Wise- 
man, will  say  that  the  English  prophet  is  a  fool. 
Perhaps  he  is ;  I  do  not  know.  What  I  do  know 
is  that  ninety-nine  years  ago  Robert  Livingston, 
when  he  had  bought  from  Napoleon  the  better 
half  of  North  America,  wrote  back  to  President 
Jefferson  to  say:  "I  have  told  them  that  we 
shall  not  send  an  emigrant  across  the  Missis- 
sippi in  one  hundred  years."  That  is  what  the 
wisest  American  of  his  time  thought  of  the  val- 
ley of  the  Mississippi  then,  and  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi  means  a  smaller  basin  than  this  val- 
ley of  the  Amazon. 

What  if  the  English  prophet  had  gone  into 
detail?  What  if  he  had  said:  "Before  a  cen- 
tury is  over  there  will  be  a  commercial  city  of 
three  hundred  thousand  people  at  the  mouth  of 

*Baker,  the  friend  and  companion  of  Tyndall. 
[151] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


the  Amazon.  A  thousand  miles  up  the  river 
there  will  be  a  city  of  more  than  half  a  million 
people.  The  tributary  rivers  water  the  prairies, 
where,  before  a  hundred  years  pass,  there  shall 
be  twenty  cities,  each  of  which  shall  have  more 
than  a  hundred  thousand  people.  They  shall 
maintain  libraries  and  museums  and  universities, 
such  as  are  not  now  known  in  the  world  at  the 
moment  I  am  writing."  This  is  what  Living- 
ston could  have  said  of  his  valley  in  1803, — if 
he  had  dared  to  prophesy  the  truth. 

Well,  just  now  the  average  American  has  the 
use  of  the  powers  of  unconscious  Nature  which 
he  has  been  harnessing  in  the  last  century.  It 
is  quite  within  bounds  to  say  that  the  average 
American  commands  one  thousand  times  as 
much  force  wooed  or  won  from  Nature  as  he  had 
a  century  ago.  Thus  far  is  a  good  God  ready 
to  help  him, — a  God  whose  child  he  is  and  of 
whose  nature  he  partakes. 

Who  dares  to  say,  with  the  experience  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  what  the  twentieth  century 
may  not  do  with  the  basin  of  the  Amazon? 

Will  the  International  Railway  perhaps  point 
to  some  energetic  Toussaint,  or  Douglas,  or 
Washington,  the  tropical  homes  of  ten  or  twenty 
millions  of  men  of  the  African  race,  whose  an- 
cestors were  torn  from  their  own  tropical  Africa 
one  or  two  centuries  ago  ? 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


A  WIDER  PROGRAMME. 

IT  is  difficult  to  make  the  men  of  affairs  in 
America   understand   that   the   establish- 
ment of  international  courts  is  a  part  of 
the  business  programme  of  the  new  cen- 
tury. 

This  is  perceived  in  Europe  by  statesmen, 
jurists,  bankers,  and  merchants, — not  with  una- 
nimity, indeed,  but  with  a  common  consent  and 
a  desire  for  action  which  is  not  appreciated  in 
America  and  is  not  shared  here. 

For  our  apparent  indifference  there  are  two 
causes :  First,  that  it  is  thirty-seven  years,  more 
than  a  generation  of  men,  since  we  were  involved 
in  any  serious  war.  The  hundred  days'  war  of 
1898  was  not  long  enough  nor  on  a  scale  large 
enough  to  derange  commerce,  manufacture,  agri- 
culture, or  finance,  which  is  so  inter-linked  with 
commerce,  agriculture  and  manufacture. 

Second,  the  cause  of  peace,  simply  because  of 
its  appeal  to  every  tender  sentiment,  has  been  rel- 
egated into  the  inferior  position  of  what  the  na- 
tional phrase  calls  a  side  show.  And  the  fact 
that  poets  and  preachers  and  little  children  and 
women  dislike  war,  with  the  other  fact  that  they 
have  been  very  apt  to  talk  very  foolishly 
in  what  they  have  said  about  it,  has  consigned 

[153] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


what  is  called  the  peace  cause  in  the  general 
mind  to  a  sort  of  outside  limbo.  The  leaders 
of  the  press  would  say  frankly  that  it  is 
what  they  call  a  back  number.  The  news- 
boys, and  older  boys  not  their  equals  in  intelli- 
gence, would  say  squarely  that  there  is  no  money 
in  it.  The  men  of  affairs,  it  is  true,  know  better. 
Any  powder  maker  will  tell  you  that  more  pow- 
der is  used  in  five  years  of  peace  than  in  five  years 
of  war.  Any  experienced  banker  will  tell  you 
that  the  speculations  which  hinge  on  victories 
and  defeats  are  much  more  dangerous  in  war 
times  than  the  speculations  of  prosperity. 
Every  man  who  studies  social  progress  knows 
that  peace  leads  to  plenty.  But,  while  men  of 
sense  and  leaders  of  finance  and  students  of  soci- 
ology make  the  public  opinion  of  a  century,  it 
is  not  they  who  make  the  public  opinion  of  a 
given  forenoon,  or  the  other  opinion  of  the  after- 
noon of  the  same  day.  And  so  is  it,  that  the 
indifference  of  the  newsboy  class  does  not  con- 
form with  the  conviction  of  the  men  who  think 
and  contrive  and  decide,  the  conviction  of  the 
men  of  affairs. 

The  last  ten  years  have  shown  that  this  is  all 
different  in  Europe.  The  press  of  Europe  was 
more  or  less  languid  regarding  international 
courts,  but  the  men  who  direct  finance,  the  men 

[154] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


who  watch  with  personal  interest  the  great  move- 
ments of  commerce,  have  shown  no  such  indif- 
ference. Thus,  when  the  Emperor  Nicholas 
issued  his  famous  rescript,  the  English  press  was 
at  first  coy,  or,  at  best,  doubtful.  "Was  the 
Czar  fooling  the  world?  Did  the  Czar  lie? 
Did  anybody  care?"  These  questions  were 
tossed  about  a  little,  before  the  daily  readers. 
But  so  soon  as  the  great  bankers  expressed  them- 
selves, as  the  corporations  of  the  great  cities 
expressed  themselves,  Lord  Salisbury  and  the 
Government  expressed  themselves  with  great 
definiteness,  and  England  was  in  the  fore-front 
of  the  combination  which  forced  through  the 
three  conventions  of  Brussels. 

Indeed,  now,  if  you  wish  to  say  the  conven- 
tional and  genteel  thing  about  The  Hague  con- 
ference, you  say,  "Of  course,  we  knew  it  must 
go  through."  In  fact,  you  say  you  had  told  the 
world  it  would  go  through;  but,  really,  that  the 
conference  did  not  go  near  far  enough,  and  left 
undone  what  it  ought  to  have  done. 

This  change  of  base  in  England,  and  the  con- 
trast to-day  between  their  work  and  the  Amer- 
ican indifference  in  this  matter,  show  that  they 
understand  better  there  than  most  people  do  here 
how  close  is  the  relation  between  general  peace 
and  general  prosperity.  Indeed,  the  whole 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


British  Empire  is  occupied  at  this  time  by  an  ob- 
ject lesson  which  keeps  public  opinion  well  up  to 
certain  decisions  on  that  point,  which  it  might 
not  have  made  without  daily  reminders.  If  a 
little  war  with  a  little  nation  which  has  no  army 
or  navy  or  arsenals  costs  three  hundred  million 
pounds  a  year,  how  much  would  a  large  war 
cost  ?  It  is  a  simple  sum  in  arithmetic,  but  prac- 
tice in  it  makes  perfect,  when  you  come  to  work- 
ing it  out  with  the  larger  figures. 

That  the  real  direction  of  affairs  is  now  in 
the  hands  of  the  men  of  affairs  in  America  was 
proved  well  enough  by  Mr.  Cleveland's  great 
experiment  in  war.  Mr.  Cleveland  chose,  for 
reasons  which  have  never  been  quite  understood, 
to  throw  in  three  lines  at  the  end  of  a  dispatch, 
which  was  not  belligerent  as  originally  drawn. 
In  these  three  lines  he  suggested  the  possi- 
bility of  a  war  between  England  and  America. 
Both  countries,  at  the  moment,  were  in  profound 
peace  with  a  promise  of  unequalled  prosperity. 
In  forty-eight  hours  all  this  was  changed.  As  a 
black  thunder  cloud  rises  on  a  summer  sky,  the 
black  threat  of  war  chilled  all  this  prospect. 
Every  man  of  business  had  to  take  in  sail.  En- 
gagements for  the  future  had  to  be  cancelled. 
Contracts  were  thrown  up ;  and  it  would  be  fair 
to  say  that  the  nation  lost  a  step  which  till  this 
year  it  has  not  regained. 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


At  that  moment  a  little  committee  of  men  of 
affairs  in  the  City  of  New  York  called  together 
a  convention  of  men  of  business  of  the  country. 
They  did  not  wait  to  have  the  men  chosen ;  they 
named  their  four  hundred  leaders  of  the  country, 
from  all  the  forty-five  States,  and  even  from  the 
Territories.  These  men  were  called  to  consider 
the  necessity  of  peace  and  the  possibilities  of 
arbitration.  They  were  called  and  they  came. 
They  spent  three  days  in  a  meeting  at  Washing- 
ton, and  when  they  went  home  the  world  of 
affairs  knew  that  the  business  men  of  this  country 
did  not  mean  to  have  any  war  with  England. 

Such  an  uprising  of  men  of  affairs  does  the 
world  a  great  deal  of  good.  The  announce- 
ment in  1898  by  the  capitalists  of  London  that 
they  meant  to  stand  by  the  Czar,  and  by  anybody 
else  who  believed  in  peace,  did  a  great  deal  of 
good.  It  created  The  Hague  conference,  and 
we  owe  to  such  an  announcement  the  three 
Hague  Conventions,  which  are  now  the  law  of 
the  world. 

M.  De  Bloch,  the  author  of  "The  War  of 
the  Future,"  understood  that  the  business  of  the 
pacification  of  the  world  is  changed  from  what 
it  was.  It  is  no  longer  a  matter  of  Sunday.  It 
is  a  matter  of  week-days.  It  is  no  longer  a 
theme  for  speeches  to  the  galleries.  It  is  the 

[157] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


foundation  for  the  commerce,  the  manufacture, 
the  business,  in  a  word,  of  mankind.  And  his 
last  published  word  to  the  world  was  an  answer 
to  the  question,  "How  to  widen  the  plan."  He 
addressed  it  to  the  men  who  met  at  Glasgow 
last  spring. 

It  should  be  on  the  desk  of  the  new  Secretary 
of  Peace,  and  on  the  desk  of  every  banking  house. 
There  is  no  sing-song  in  it,  and  no  sugar  candy. 
It  tells  the  hard,  square  truth  about  war  and  the 
changes  which  have  come  to  armies  and  soldiers. 
It  tells  the  square  truth  about  peace,  and  the 
chances  for  peace  and  against  it.  If  the  peace 
societies  do  not  care  to  go  into  such  work  as 
M.  De  Bloch  assigned  to  them  in  his  dying 
words,  why,  the  Chambers  of  Commerce,  the 
Boards  of  Trade,  will  take  it  out  of  their  hands. 

AROUND  HOME. 

Nr  OTHING  has  done  so  much  good  for 
the  sturdiness  and  success  of  American 
life  as  the  pride  of  our  people  in  their 
own  homes.     And  this  is  right — it  is 
just  as  it  should  be.     Long  before  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  the  people  of  Paxton,  as 
the  people  in  fifty  other  towns  in  New  England, 
declared  war  against  George  III. 

[158] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


That  is,  in  town  meeting  they  ordered  their 
selectmen  to  order  powder  enough  and  bullets 
enough  for  all  the  men  of  those  towns  to  use 
when  the  time  should  come  for  fighting  George 
III. 

An  English  traveller  said  to  me  one  day  that 
in  passing  from  Boston  to  San  Francisco  and 
back  again  nothing  amused  him  so  much  as  the 
number  of  home  celebrations.  It  was  the  anni- 
versary of  that  battle,  or  it  was  the  anniversary 
of  the  laying  of  the  cornerstone  of  the  church. 

People  got  together  and  stroked  each  other's 
hair  and  congratulated  each  other  that  they  were 
born  in  Lexington,  or  in  Lawrence,  or  in  Denver. 
It  was  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  this  or  the 
one  hundredth  anniversary  of  that. 

If  this  traveller  had  but  known  it,  it  is  such 
pride  in  one's  home  which  has  made  America  a 
different  place  from  Europe,  and  makes  it 
worth  while  to  live  in  America.  If  in  any  city 
outside  of  Paris,  in  France,  I  should  ask  the  gen- 
tleman at  whose  home  I  was  visiting  how  they 
arranged  for  the  health  of  the  community,  how 
they  kept  the  water  supply  from  contamination, 
or  how  they  arranged  the  sewage,  he  would  say : 
"Oh,  they  settle  that  for  us  in  Paris;  they  send 
down  the  proper  man,  who  arranges  it  all.  I 
really  cannot  tell  you  about  it.  If  it  is  necessary 

[159] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


for  you  to  know  I  can  give  you  a  note  to  head- 
quarters." 

If  I  put  the  same  question  in  a  town  here  my 
host  himself  is  able  and  reliable;  he  has  served 
on  the  Board  of  Health;  if  in  New  England,  he 
has  been  one  of  the  selectmen.  He  has  been  a 
county  supervisor ;  at  the  very  least  he  has  voted 
for  this  policy  or  that  policy  in  the  supply  of 
the  water  or  in  the  drainage  of  the  town. 

As  one  knocks  about,  going  over  the  country, 
he  sees  the  necessity  of  preserving  this  local  feel- 
ing, of  interesting  people  in  what  they  have  at 
home. 

The  teacher  of  every  school,  public  or  private, 
ought  to  call  the  attention  of  the  children  to  their 
local  history,  to  their  local  advantages,  and  so 
make  them  proud  that  they  live  in  that  particular 
place.  "The  company  that  saved  the  day  at 
Bennington  or  at  Herkimer  was  formed  on  the 
green  in  front  of  the  church.  Walter,  your 
grandfather  was  there,  and  you  must  make  your 
father  tell  you  the  story,  and  next  Wednesday 
you  shall  tell  it  to  the  school." 

Or  there  is  some  peculiarity  in  the  vegetation 
of  the  neighborhood.  "How  many  of  the  chil- 
dren know  that  such  and  such  ferns  grow  here 
which  grow  nowhere  else  in  New  York?  Last 
August  there  was  a  gentleman  here  who  came 
[160] 


THE  NEW  CENTURY 


all  the  way  from  Washington  to  see  those  ferns 
at  the  right  season." 

In  some  of  the  newer  States  of  the  West  they 
have  what  they  call  the  "Country's  Day,"  or 
"Patriot's  Day,"  that  the  children  who  have 
come  from  Norway  or  Sweden,  or  Bulgaria  or 
Arabia,  may  know  that  it  is  a  good  thing  to  live 
in  America,  and  that  it  is  a  different  thing  from 
living  in  countries  governed  as  those  countries 
were  governed. 

I  know  of  schools  where  at  the  end  of  the 
autumn  term  and  the  winter  term  and  the  spring 
term  there  is  a  regular  celebration,  in  which  the 
boys  and  girls  "speak  pieces"  taken  from  our 
best  public  speakers.  They  sing  patriotic  songs, 
they  buy  a  new  flag,  if  the  old  one  is  worn  out, 
they  make  a  sort  of  holiday  of  the  day,  so  that 
those  children  may  grow  up  with  some  knowl- 
edge of  the  privileges  and  duties  of  the  country 
which  they  are  to  govern. 

There  is  not  one  of  those  boys  but  will  be 
glad  to  give  his  first  vote  when  he  is  twenty-one 
years  old.  There  is  not  one  of  those  girls  but 
will  be  glad  to  sew  a  button  on  his  coat  for  him 
if  he  should  go  out  with  the  Forty-ninth  Regi- 
ment or  the  Fiftieth.  And  the  people  who  run 
those  schools  mean  that  when  that  time  comes 
the  boys  and  girls  shall  know  what  they  are 
[161] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


going  to  vote  for  and  what  they  are  going  to 
fight  for. 

A  well-informed  man  said  to  me  in  Chicago 
that  the  resolution  and  pride  with  which  a  Chi- 
cago man  speaks  for  his  city  and  works  for  his 
city  can  be  compared  with  nothing  but  the  sim- 
ilar pride  with  which  in  the  best  days  of  Athens 
an  Athenian  lived  for  Athens. 

I  think  this  pride  and  the  determination  to 
improve  the  city  is  a  very  valuable  part  of  the 
make-up  of  Chicago.  Every  man  wants  to 
maintain  his  pride  in  his  country,  his  pride  in  his 
State,  his  pride  in  the  town  to  which  he  belongs. 

Everything  that  the  schools  can  do,  and  the 
pulpit  and  the  journals,  ought  to  be  done,  that 
the  boys  and  girls  may  be  proud  and  glad  that 
they  live  where  they  do  and  work  where  they  do, 
and  that  they  know  why. 


[162] 


ANNIVERSARIES 


History 

OCTOBER  TWENTY-ONE— WHAT? 

I    AM  fond  of  puzzling  my  younger  friends 
on  this  day  and  saying,  "To-day  is  the 
most  important  day  in  Modern  History: 
What  is  it?"     And  in  eleven  times  out  of 
twenty,  they  do  not  know. 

All  the  same,  "The  Admiral  upon  the  castle 
of  the  poop  of  the  ship  at  ten  o'clock  at  night, 
on  the  eleventh  of  October,  1492,  saw  a  great 
light.  After  he  spoke  of  it  to  Pedro  Gutierrez, 
the  light  was  seen  once  or  twice.  The  Admiral 
was  certain  that  it  was  a  sign  of  land." 

In  a  judicial  examination  which  determined 
the  award  of  a  prize  offered  to  the  first  person 
who  saw  the  New  World,  that  prize  was  awarded 
to  the  Admiral  himself,  Christopher  Columbus. 
He  was  not  in  his  berth  that  night,  you  may  be 
sure  of  that.  "He  was  on  deck,"  as  our  fine 
American  proverb  has  it;  and  he  was  "looking 
forward  and  not  back."  He  saw  a  light  and 
reported  what  he  saw  to  the  others.  A  light  in 
the  darkness,  that  is  the  token,  or  what  the 
Indians  call  a  "totem,"  of  this  New  World. 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


In  1790,  or  thereabouts,  the  Academy  of 
Lyons  in  France  offered  a  purse  of  one  thousand 
Louis  d'or  for  the  best  essay  on  the  advantages 
which  the  great  discovery  had  brought  to  man- 
kind. Francs,  observe,  were  not  known,  nor 
Napoleons.  We  still  offered  prizes  in  Louis 
d'or. 

To  tell  the  whole  truth,  the  thinking  world  of 
Europe,  excepting  the  political  enthusiasts,  didn't 
take  much  stock  in  America  just  then.  The  gen- 
eral opinion  of  the  "respectable  classes,"  who 
have  money  in  their  pockets,  or  of  that  larger 
class  who  wish  they  had,  was  against  America. 
America  was  always  the  cause  of  war.  The  per- 
petual influx  of  gold  and  silver  into  Europe 
steadily  reduced  the  value  of  money.  All  debts 
were  always  paid  in  a  lower  currency  than  that 
in  which  they  were  made. 

The  Academy  never  gave  any  prize,  but  Ray- 
nal  had  proposed  it,  and  several  essays  were  writ- 
ten in  competition.  Chastellux,  the  man  who 
supplied  brains  to  Rochambeau,  wrote  for  it,  and 
a  man  named  Genty  printed  his  own  paper.  He 
was  a  French  censor  who  gave  the  government 
permits  to  print  books  or  journals.  I  believe  I 
am  the  only  person  alive  who  ever  read  his  book. 
I  found  it  worth  reading.  He  thinks  he  has  to 
admit  that  the  influence  on  trade  and  politics 
[166] 


HISTORY 

thus  far  had  been  bad.  But  at  the  very  end  of 
his  dark  picture,  he  says  the  independence  of  the 
Anglo-Americans  is  the  event  most  likely  to 
accelerate  the  revolution  which  is  to  renew  the 
happiness  of  the  world. 

Within  three  months  of  the  anniversary,  poor 
France  had  beheaded  her  King  and  the  Reign  of 
Terror  was  begun.  They  had  but  little  chance 
then  to  inquire  whether  Jesuit  bark  or  Peruvian 
silver  did  them  good  or  harm. 

In  the  hundred  and  ten  years  which  have 
passed  since,  it  has  proved  that  the  poor  forgot- 
ten Abbe  Genty  knew  what  he  was  talking  about. 
It  has  proved  that  the  great  political,  social, 
moral,  and  religious  lesson  which  this  half  of 
the  world  has  taught  to  the  other  half  is  worth 
a  thousand  times  as  much  to  it  as  all  the  commer- 
cial benefits  which  the  essayists  of  that  time 
wrote  about.  It  has  proved  that  commerce,  as 
always,  is  companion  of  civilization  and  religion. 
And,  at  the  same  time,  it  has  proved  that  civili- 
zation and  religion  direct  commerce  and  the 
handiwork  of  men. 

What  with  imperial  government  and  different 
forms  of  paganism,  some  of  which  take  very 
fine  names;  what  with  feudalism  and  "barons  and 
squires  and  knights  of  the  shires,"  the  Old  World 
could  not  work  out  the  great  experiments  of  the 

[167] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Christian  religion.  But  it  also  proved  that 
whenever  feudalism  landed  on  what  man 
thought  the  most  barren  part  of  America — the 
seashore  between  Labrador  and  Florida — feu- 
dalism died  in  half  an  hour.  It  has  proved  that 
government  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  by 
the  people  would  work  out  the  salvation  of  the 
people,  not  only  in  petty  villages,  but  in  the  man- 
agement of  a  great  nation.  And  this  great  gift 
America  has  given  to  the  world.  God  wanted 
white  paper  for  His  Gospel,  and  when  Columbus 
landed  on  San  Salvador  that  white  paper  was 
unrolled. 

Give  me  white  paper ! 

This  which  you  use  is  black  and  rough  with  smears 
Of  sweat  and  grime  and  fraud  and  blood  and  tears, 
Crossed  with  the  story  of  men's  sins  and  fears, 
Of  battle  and  of  famine  all  these  years, 
When  all  God's  children  have  forgot  their  birth, 
And  drudged  and  fought  and  died  like  beasts  of  earth. 

Give  me  white  paper! 

One  storm-trained  seaman  listened  to  the  word; 

What  no  man  saw,  he  saw ;  he  heard  what  no  man  heard ; 
In  answer  he  compelled  the  sea 
To  eager  man  to  tell 
The  secret  she  had  kept  so  well. 

Left  blood  and  guilt  and  tyranny  behind, 

Sailing  still  west  the  hidden  shore  to  find; 

For  all  mankind  that  unstained  scroll  unfurled, 

Where  God  might  write  anew  the  story  of  the  world. 

[168] 


HISTORY 

DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

IT  is  fifty  years  ago  to-day  since  Daniel  Web- 
ster died.  His  last  words,  "I  still  live," 
may  be  well  remembered  after  all  the 
years  of  half  a  century. 

His  own  college  celebrated  the  centennial  of 
his  commencement  a  year  ago.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber any  other  such  celebration.  Few  men,  in- 
deed, are  remembered  in  the  same  way.  We  live 
in  to-day,  as  we  ought  to  live.  And  few  men  live 
for  to-morrow  so  successfully  that  they  may  ex- 
pect that  the  world  will  stop  after  a  hundred 
years  to  remember  the  date  of  a  commencement. 

But  Webster's  life  made  its  mark.  A  distin- 
guished officer  who  served  as  a  young  man  in 
the  Civil  War,  said  to  me  when  he  had  just  come 
home,  "I  will  tell  you  what  sent  me  into  the 
army.  It  was  speaking  Webster's  speeches  at 
school.  "Liberty  and  union,  now  and  forever, 
one  and  inseparable."  Nobody  can  even  guess 
how  many  Northern  boys  would  say  the  same 
thing.  And  now  that  the  United  States  is  a 
nation,  it  is  hard  to  make  anybody  believe  that 
there  were  times  when  such  lessons  were  needed. 

There  is  a  queer  if  in  Webster's  history,  which 
tempts  some  curious  questions.  He  began  the 
practice  of  law  in  his  own  State,  New  Hamp- 

[169] 


,  THE  PEOPLE' 


shire.  His  first  speeches  in  Congress  were  made 
when  he  represented  a  New  Hampshire  district. 
I  think  he  was  in  Washington  when  a  fire  de- 
stroyed his  home  and  his  valuable  library  in 
Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire.  Should  he  re- 
build? It  was  to  be  a  turning-point  of  his  life. 

And  he  knew  then  as  well  as  he  knew  in  1852 
that  New  York  is  the  Empire  State.  He  went 
to  Albany,  to  consider  the  question  whether  he 
would  not  go  to  Albany  to  live. 

Were  there  perhaps  too  many  promising  law- 
yers there  for  a  young  New  Hampshire  attorney 
of  thirty-three  years  to  venture  to  put  up  his 
shingle  there?  At  all  events,  Mr.  Webster 
turned  down  Albany,  and  went  to  Boston. 
From  that  time,  one  might  say  fairly,  he  directed 
the  politics  of  Massachusetts  for  thirty  years, — 
not  longer. 

But  as  I  say,  if  he  had  come  to  Albany,  what 
then? 

Be  it  remembered  that  the  "Missouri  ques- 
tion," the  first  anti-slavery  question,  loomed  up 
just  afterwards.  Be  it  remembered  that  when 
every  Northern  representative  who  voted  for 
Mr.  Clay's  compromise  was  thrown  out  of  the 
line  by  his  constituents,  Mr.  Webster  headed  the 
opposition  to  slavery  in  Massachusetts.  In 
1 822  he  was  sent  to  Congress  purely  on  Northern 


HISTORY 

grounds.  The  philosopher  Emerson,  not  long 
out  of  college,  wrote  in  triumph: 

"By  dint  of  much  electioneering,  the  good 
cause  has  succeeded,  and  we  are  sending  our 
giant  down  among  you  false  Sothrons.  We  are 
proudly  anticipating  the  triumph  of  the  North- 
ern interest  to  be  gained  or  to  be  achieved  by 
Mr.  Webster.  ...  I  think  Mr.  Webster  had 
about  two-thirds  of  the  whole  number  of  votes." 

What  would  have  happened  to  the  country 
IF,  IF  in  his  office  in  Albany,  Daniel  Webster 
had  taken  up  the  sceptre  which  Rufus  King  was 
laying  down?  Perhaps  some  of  the  young  gen- 
tlemen or  ladies  will  write  for  us,  "The  Apoc- 
ryphal Daniel  Webster;"  as  a  bright  Frenchman 
once  wrote  "The  Apocryphal  Napoleon." 

It  seems  queer  enough  to  any  one  who  grew  up 
in  a  school  of  old-time  Abolitionists  to  speak  of 
Mr.  Webster  as  a  possible  leader  of  theirs.  But 
the  passage  above  shows  the  feeling  in  1822. 
People  did  not  talk  much  about  slavery.  But 
they  did  begin  to  know  that  there  was  a  North 
and  a  South.  And  Mr.  Webster  was  already 
recognized  as  a  great  Northern  leader.  When 
"nullification"  was  asserted  as  right  and  duty, 
Mr.  Webster  appeared  as  the  great  Union  lead- 
er. When  Andrew  Jackson  coolly  informed 
Mr.  Calhoun  that  if  he  did  not  look  out  he  would 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


be  hanged,  when  he  gave  his  famous  toast,  "The 
Federal  Union,  it  must  be  preserved,"  Mr. 
Webster  and  he  were  in  accord.  Men  even  said 
that  Webster  wrote  one  of  "Old  Hickory's" 
messages.  And  when,  only  a  few  years  after 
Massachusetts  had  given  Jackson  but  a  fourth 
part  of  her  popular  vote,  he  made  a  "progress" 
in  Massachusetts,  and  was  received  with  the 
utmost  enthusiasm,  because  he  and  Mr.  Webster 
had  "saved  the  Union." 

It  is,  I  suppose,  an  open  secret,  that  after 
General  Harrison's  death,  when  Webster  was 
still  Secretary  of  State,  he  still  wished  to  lead  the 
North  against  the  South.  It  is  believed  that  in 
1841,  when  he  was  still  in  the  Cabinet,  he  laid 
before  the  party  leaders  of  the  Whigs  of  New 
England  his  conviction  that  they  must  take  dis- 
tinctly the  Northern  view  as  against  the  Southern 
encroachments.  He  tried  to  persuade  them  to 
do  so.  The  "Conscience  Whigs"  said  "Yes." 
But  the  "Cotton  Whigs"  said  "No."  Mr.  Web- 
ster found  that  his  own  party  leaders  disowned 
him.  He  went  back  to  Washington  a  disgusted 
and  disappointed  man.  And  he  obeyed  in  his 
fashion  his  tried  counsellors.  But  to  support 
him  he  had  always  that  passion  for  union  which 
had  been  his  ruling  passion  since  he  was  a  boy. 
And  he  had  the  wish  for  peace  which  every  lover 

[  172] 


HISTORY 


of  his  country  has.  And  when  he  gave  his  un- 
willing assent  in  his  March  yth  speech,  on  the 
Compromise  of  1852,  all  men  knew  that  the 
issue  was  yes  or  no  on  the  matter  of  the  Civil 
War. 

This  determination  to  maintain  the  Union  is 
what  men  remember  of  Daniel  Webster.  They 
do  not  sit  in  judgment  on  this  or  that  question 
of  method  or  detail. 


FOREFATHERS'  DAY. 

THE  celebration  of  the  Forefathers'  land- 
ing falls  very  naturally  into  ecclesias- 
tical   hands,    because    the    Plymouth 
Church  gives  the  first  visible,  concrete 
illustration  in  English  history  of  the  establish- 
ment of  a  church  absolutely  independent.     I  like 
to  remind  my  ecclesiastical  friends  of  what  they 
do  not  like  to  be  reminded  of.     They  are  very 
glad  to  say  that  here  was  a  "church  without  a 
bishop,"  taking  Mr.  Choate's  fine  epigram  of 
fifty  years  ago.     So  it  was.     But  they  are  not 
apt  to  to  say  that  it  was  a  church  without  any  or- 
dained minister.     There  had  been  no  laying  on 
of  hands  by  anybody.     William  Brewster,  who 
preached  to  them,  preached  to  them  because  he 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


was  a  good  man  and  could  preach.  If  they  cel- 
ebrated the  Lord's  Supper — and  1  think  they  did 
— the  Lord's  Supper  was  simply  the  repast  of 
brethren  and  sisters  who  passed  the  bread  and 
wine  from  hand  to  hand.  No  one  of  them  was 
in  any  sort  or  sense  or  pretence  the  superior  in 
authority  to  any  other.  When  I  say  this  to  my 
ecclesiastical  friends,  they  say,  "Yes" — very 
much  obliged  to  me  for  saying  it ;  and  then  they 
turn  the  conversation  in  another  direction.  And 
all  the  same  it  is  true. 

What  is  important  to  observe  when  we  study 
the  history  of  that  first  generation,  and  the  his- 
tory nearly  parallel  of  the  first  thirty  years  of 
the  settlers  in  the  Bay,  is  this:  the  ecclesiastical 
independence  led  directly  to  political  independ- 
ence, pure  and  simple. 

The  five-and-twenty  men  from  Leyden  who 
survived  their  first  winter  in  Plymouth  went  to 
a  religious  meeting  or  to  a  political  meeting  with 
just  the  same  warrant.  Equals  before  God,  they 
were  equals  in  the  State.  Ecclesiastical  tyranny 
had  compelled  them  to  consider  the  rights  of 
men  in  their  worship  of  God.  And  they  had 
come  out  on  the  conclusion  which  all  Protestant 
Christendom  has  come  out  on  to-day — that  one 
man's  right  in  this  business  is  as  good  as  an- 
other's. After  three  centuries  we  understand 

[174] 


HISTORY 

what  perhaps  they  did  not  comprehend,  that  we 
are  all  of  the  nature  of  God  Himself — not  sim- 
ply His  creatures,  but  His  children.  They  had 
crossed  the  water,  they  were  literally  in  a  new 
world,  because  in  the  Old  World  they  could  not 
maintain  this  absolute  equality  of  the  children 
as  they  nestled  in  their  Father's  arms,  and  their 
absolute  independence  of  all  power  excepting 
His  power.  If  anybody  cares,  they  added  that 
word  "independence"  to  the  English  language, 
because  under  the  feudal  system  nobody  had  ever 
wanted  any  such  word  before  their  time.  Here 
they  got  what  they  wanted.  Nobody  chose  to 
follow  them,  so  that  they  were,  of  course,  inde- 
pendent. 

I  do  not  suppose  they  expected  what  followed. 
Literally,  as  Mr.  Emerson  said,  they  builded 
better  than  they  knew.  Independence  in  wor- 
ship had  been  worth  coming  for.  And,  lol  as 
always  happens  to  those  who  sought  first  the 
kingdom  of  God,  all  the  things  of  earth  were 
added — added,  if  you  please,  to  their  own  sur- 
prise. Everything  was  added  which  is  worth 
more  than  a  straw  or  a  feather.  Equality  before 
the  law  was  added.  This  means  education  of 
each  and  all.  It  means  open  promotion  for  each 
and  all.  Yes,  it  means  equal  duty  for  each  and 
all,  because  it  means  equal  privilege  for  each  and 

[175] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE1 


all.  I  must  do  my  part.  You  must  do  yours. 
If  the  reader  is  in  the  State  called  Massachu- 
setts, and  while  he  reads,  men  should  rush  in  and 
tell  him  that  the  block  of  buildings  were  on  fire, 
if  he  should  hurry  into  the  street,  and  the  officer 
in  charge  thought  he  needed  him  in  the  high 
story  of  the  burning  block  to  carry  a  leading 
hose  or  to  carry  an  order,  he  must  go.  Because 
he  is  a  citizen  of  the  State,  he  is  a  servant  of  the 
State.  That  is  to  say,  the  American  citizen  does 
not  obey  the  law  given  by  any  superior.  He 
obeys  the  law  made  by  himself  and  the  rest  of  the 
people.  "All  for  each,  and  each  for  all."  This 
principle  laid  itself  down  when  those  twenty 
weavers  and  dyers  and  spinners  and  printers  met 
together  in  their  first  town  meeting : — equality  in 
duty,  the  equality  of  privilege,  the  equality  of 
right  before  the  law. 

Observe,  then,  that  these  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  men  meet  at  the  call  of  the  governor  whom 
they  have  themselves  appointed.  It  is  not  any 
King  Egbert  or  King  James  who  calls  his  faith- 
ful commons  together  to  consult  or  to  advise 
him.  It  is  John  Carver  or  William  Bradford, 
whom  they  have  themselves  appointed  to  sum- 
mon them  on  whatever  emergency.  Certain 
necessities  have  shown  themselves.  Perhaps  a 
pier  must  be  run  out  from  the  Plymouth  Rock 
[176] 


HISTORY 

for  the  shallop.  Perhaps  a  bridge  must  be  built 
across  the  brook;  or  shall  it  be  a  furlong  farther 
up  ?  Or  matters  must  be  decided  for  the  future. 
If  some  lazy  dog  refuses  to  work,  shall  he  be 
flogged  and  shall  he  be  set  in  the  stocks?  Who 
shall  flog  him?  Who  shall  lock  the  padlock, 
and  who  shall  unlock  it?  See,  from  the  begin- 
ning, how  different  this  is  from  feudal  law.  It 
is  no  longer  I,  the  baron,  will  flog  you,  John 
Doe,  or  will  tell  my  tip-staves  to  do  it.  It  is 
"We,  the  People,  in  this  storeroom,  determine 
that,  if  any  one  of  us  refuse  obedience  to  any 
one  of  our  laws,  our  officer  shall  flog  that  man  or 
shall  imprison  him."  This  distinction  of  origin, 
purpose,  and  method,  runs  down  to  the  present 
time. 

It  is  queer  enough  that  the  European  writers 
cannot  be  made  to  understand  it.  They  think 
the  governor  is  a  king  with  a  different  name,  or 
the  president  an  emperor  with  a  different  name. 
I  have  had  an  officer  of  the  English  government 
talking  to  me  of  Grover  Cleveland,  calling  him 
the  ruler  of  America.  Grover  Cleveland  was 
no  more  the  ruler  of  America  than  I  am  the  Shah 
of  Persia,  and  he  knew  that  perfectly  well.  I 
have  heard  an  intelligent  scholar  abuse  William 
McKinley  for  carrying  out  the  instructions  of 
Congress.  Fortunately  for  Mr.  McKinley,  he 

[  177] 


E,  THE  PEOPLE" 


had  read  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
He  knew  that  in  the  matter  of  war  and  peace 
he  must  obey  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States.  Simply,  it  is  "We,  the  People,"  who  are 
the  sovereign  of  America.  That  principle 
announced  itself  when  the  five-and-twenty  sur- 
vivors of  the  Mayflower  met  and  voted  how 
many  stripes  each  of  them  should  receive  if  he 
were  lazy,  and  who  should  be  the  man  to  admin- 
ister them. 

What  comes  of  this  system?  We  can  see  in 
two  or  three  concrete  examples.  But  first  let 
me  meet  the  sneer  of  those  who  say  they  prefer 
the  "government  by  the  best,"  such  people  as 
Thomas  Carlyle,  Matthew  Arnold,  Gov.  Peter 
Stuyvesant,  and  the  Emperor  of  Germany.  "We, 
the  People,"  are  very  ignorant,  they  say.  So  they 
are,  God  knows !  There  is  not  one  in  a  hundred 
of  them  to  whom  you  would  give  your  watch 
to  mend.  That  is  true,  God  knows !  But  what 
they  do  know  is  what  they  want.  And  of  a 
democratic  government,  such  as  they  established, 
the  merit  is  this :  that  the  majority  of  the  people 
have  what  they  want.  The  minority  of  the 
people  know  that  the  law  is  supported  by  the 
stronger  side.  And  therefore  they  keep  the 
peace.  The  majority  want  to  try  the  experi- 
ment. If  it  succeed,  well !  and  the  world  makes 


HISTORY 

a  step  forward.  If  it  fails,  what  matter?  We 
can  change  it  at  the  next  session.  In  ten  words, 
here  is  the  history  of  Massachusetts  and  her  leg- 
islation from  Winslow's  time  to  the  American 
Revolution.  They  tried  this  and  that  and  an- 
other experiment.  They  tried  the  Mosaic  law, 
tried  bounties  for  iron  and  for  salt,  tried  catch- 
ing whales  on  shares,  tried  exiling  Baptists  and 
hanging  Quakers.  If  these  experiments  failed, 
why,  they  failed;  and  that  was  the  end  of  them. 
If  they  succeeded,  they  succeeded;  and  whoever 
wanted  to  improve  upon  them  might  improve 
upon  them. 

A  convenient  instance,  because  it  is  small 
enough  to  be  studied  in  some  detail,  is  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  lighthouse.  Here  is  the  right  arm 
of  Massachusetts!  It  is  hospitable  enough  to 
our  Pilgrims.  As  Mr.  Edward  Everett  says  so 
finely:  "The  little  hills  rejoiced  when  the  May- 
flower approached,  and  the  mountains  clapped 
their  hands.  The  mighty  God  stretched  out  His 
right  arm  into  the  Atlantic,  and  received  the 
storm-tossed  Mayflower  in  the  hollow  of  His 
hand."  Yes,  hospitable  to  the  Pilgrims  in  the 
day-time;  but,  when  Captain  Pierce  in  the  John 
and  Mary  makes  the  coast  in  February,  when,  like 
Saint  Paul,  he  sounds  and  has  twenty  fathoms, 
then  sounds  again  and  has  but  fifteen  fathoms, 

[  179] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


who  is  to  tell  him  which  way  to  steer?  We,  the 
People,  build  for  him  the  lighthouse  and  the 
headland.  We,  the  People,  light  for  him  the 
beacon  fires  every  night.  We  give  the  friendly 
warning  to  him  at  night.  He  shortens  sail  or 
he  puts  down  his  helm.  The  sun  rises.  "Lo! 
land!  and  all  is  well!" 

And  how  do  feudal  systems  welcome  him? 
Has  he  a  welcome  there  when  he  returns  to 
England?  Yes;  it  is  the  welcome  of  the  land- 
owner, who  has  bought  from  a  baron,  who  was 
the  grandson  of  an  earl,  who  inherited  from  a 
pirate — the  privilege  of  lighting  a  beacon  on  a 
headland  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mersey.  And, 
before  Captain  Pierce  can  enter  his  harbor,  he 
must  pay  a  fee  to  the  light-keeper  whose  master 
inherits  this  piratical  claim.  But  We,  the  Peo- 
ple, know  that  all  the  people  are  the  better  be- 
cause the  John  and  Mary  arrived.  We,  the 
People,  welcome  her  on  her  arrival.  And,  in 
historical  fact,  the  free  lighthouses  on  the  Mas- 
sachusetts shore,  and  all  our  free  lighthouses 
which  mark  on  the  maps  of  heaven  the  ocean 
shores  of  half  a  continent,  have  been  the 
object  lesson  of  the  world.  They  have  changed 
and  are  changing  the  legislation  of  the  world. 
We  gently  reminded  the  government  of  Den- 
mark that  every  Danish  ship  entered  our  harbors 
[180] 


HISTORY 

without  the  annoyance  of  light  dues;  and  for 
the  first  time  in  a  thousand  years  the  ships  of  the 
world  passed  into  the  Baltic  free  from  the  taxes 
at  Elsinore — taxes  which  are  older  than  Ham- 
let's time. 

A  good  instance  in  a  matter  which  sooner  or 
later  is  of  importance  to  every  man  is  the  system, 
all  but  universal  now  in  the  really  civilized  na- 
tions of  the  world,  of  the  registration  of  deeds. 
Even  England  has  entered  with  spirit  on  such  a 
registration.  Where  was  the  registration  in- 
vented? It  began,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course, 
so  soon  as  men  were  really  governing  themselves, 
were  making  their  laws  for  their  own  use,  and 
were  making  them,  therefore,  as  they  themselves 
needed.  This  is  to  say,  the  system  began  in  the 
Old  Colony.  It  began,  I  think,  when  there 
were  not  twenty  thousand  people  in  the  Old 
Colony.  But  what  is  good  for  a  few  is  probably 
good  for  all.  The  Bay  Colony  borrowed  it 
from  Plymouth.  All  civilized  America  bor- 
rowed it  from  New  England.  And  now,  wher- 
ever constitutional  government  has  gone,  the 
public  registration  of  deeds  has  gone.  So  far 
that  little  candle  sheds  its  beams.  Or  so  far 
does  that  mustard  seed  overshadow  the  world. 

In  a  pure  democracy,  again,  which  means  an 
independent  state,  free  from  feudal  traditions, 
[181] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


you  have  the  best  possible  chance  to  have  all 
sorts  of  men  bring  forward  their  best  sugges- 
tions. You  want  a  Benjamin  Franklin;  and  it 
proves  that  a  hungry,  runaway  apprentice  fills 
the  bill.  You  need  Abraham  Lincoln;  and  he 
steps  out  of  a  log  cabin,  and  says,  "Here  am  I." 
"A  man's  a  man,"  and  the  man  does  not  need 
to  wait  on  the  direction  of  baron  or  squire  or 
knight  of  a  shire.  This  is  what  you  gain  when 
you  listen  to  everybody  and  choose  the  best. 

THE  WAY  AND  HOW  THEY  FOUND 
CHRISTMAS. 

A    BABY  is  born,  and  is  laid  in  a  crib. 
I  like  to  use  the  old  Saxon  word,  be- 
cause I  was  laid  in  a  crib  myself  when 
I  was  a  baby.     A  sentinel  saw  the  light 
which  shone  out  under  a  crack  of  the  stable  door. 
That  is  Mr.  Domett's  pretty  fancy  as  being  the 
first  flash  of  the  Light  which  has  enlightened  the 
world. 

A  generation  after  the  birth  of  the  child  there 
had  clustered  round  him  a  few  personal  friends, 
men  and  women.  Of  these  the  men  forsook  him 
and  fled  when  he  was  arrested  in  Gethsemane. 
The  women  stood  by  his  grave  when  he  died. 
But,  after  he  died,  the  men  and  women  got  to- 
[182] 


HISTORY 

gether,  and  the  company  of  them  was  a  hundred 
and  twenty.  We  "ten  times  one"  people  like  to 
remember  that  ten  times  twelve  is  one  hundred 
and  twenty.  Not  long  after,  the  Book  of  Acts 
says  that  the  number  of  people  who  believed  that 
this  was  the  Saviour  of  the  world  was  more  than 
three  thousand. 

Three  hundred  years  afterward  Constantine 
believed  that  a  fifteenth  part  of  the  people  of 
his  empire  were  Christians.  Seven  hundred 
years  after  that  every  king  in  Europe  told  his 
people  that  Christ  was  his  Master  and  theirs. 
What  works  this  increase  in  the  number  of  Chris- 
tian men  and  women  ? 

Is  it  learning?     Is  it  scholarship?     No. 

I  put  down  the  pen  with  which  I  wrote  these 
words  to  look  at  the  best  biographical  dictionary 
which  I  know,  and  read  with  some  care  the  names 
of  the  poets,  the  preachers,  and  theologians  of 
the  eight  centuries  between  lamblichus  and  the 
First  Crusade.  By  far  the  greater  part  of  these 
were  what  are  called  Christian  writers.  I  do 
not  believe  that  in  five  hundred  of  them  there  are 
more  than  six  names  which  are  known  to  the  aver- 
age college  graduate  or  intelligent  reader  of  our 
time.  I  think  the  names  of  both  Augustines,  of 
Ambrose  and  Abelard  and  Athanasius,  and 
Chrysostom  and  Saint  Jerome  might  be  known 


,  THE  PEOPLE1 


in  the  circles  of  most  intelligence.  But  except- 
ing a  few  passages  from  Augustine  and  except- 
ing the  hymn  of  Te  Deum  and  possibly  one  or 
two  other  fragments  in  the  hymn-books,  there 
have  not  been  ten  words  which  belong  to  those 
centuries  which  have  been  read  in  the  year  1902 
by  anybody  outside  the  theological  schools.  Yet 
here  in  the  eleventh  century  was  a  continent — the 
continent  of  Europe — in  which  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  was  united  absolutely  in  their 
determination  to  honor  Jesus  Christ.  They 
took  a  poor  way  to  show  it,  if  you  please;  but 
they  took  a  way  which  involved  personal  sacri- 
fice, which  led  thousands  of  them  to  death  away 
from  home. 

Counting  nine  or  ten  centuries  more  from  the 
First  Crusade  to  our  time,  and  you  come  out  on 
what  we  call  Christendom.  The  word  "Chris- 
tianity" is  now  practically  the  same  word  as  the 
word  "civilization."  Thus  a  law  is  now  tested 
by  the  question  of  whether  it  is  or  is  not  a  Chris- 
tian law.  In  face  of  the  blunders  of  the  ecclesi- 
astics, in  face  of  ignorance  and  the  worship  of 
the  letter  and  the  idolatry  of  things,  the  name  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  the  "Way,"  as  Saint  Paul  calls 
it,  of  Jesus  Christ  govern  the  words  and  the  leg- 
islation and  the  business  of  the  world. 

Yet,  once  more,  when  you  look  at  the  intel- 

[184] 


HISTORY 

lectual  work  of  these  nine  or  ten  centuries  or  at 
the  edicts  of  emperors  or  kings,  you  find  that 
these  have  really  literally  next  to  nothing  to  do, 
perhaps  nothing  to  do,  with  this  present  sway  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  leader  of  men. 

Two  millenniums  nearly  have  gone  by  since 
He  lived  and  died.  He  sent  out  twelve  apostles, 
one  of  whom  broke  down  before  his  work  began. 
Of  the  other  eleven,  we  know  a  little  of  four  or 
five.  We  know  almost  nothing  of  the  rest. 
Since  that  time,  when  we  come  to  speak  of  men 
who  are  worth  naming  in  the  same  minute  with 
Saint  Paul  or  Saint  John  in  any  list  of  apostles, 
we  find  ourselves  very  soon  at  the  end  of  our 
catalogue.  It  will  be  hard  to  name  twenty  lead- 
ers in  twenty  centuries  whose  public  work  in  the 
fields  of  intellect  or  in  the  kindred  fields  of  gov- 
ernment, even  with  the  magic  of  poetry  or  music, 
has  placed  them  in  the  rank  of  apostles.  Yet 
here  are  millions  upon  millions  of  men,  women 
and  children  of  the  world,  making  nearly  half 
the  people  now  in  the  world,  who  really  belonged 
to  the  Christian  Church.  They  were  born  into 
the  Christian  Church.  The  baby  born  in  North 
Street  yesterday  was  wrapped  in  a  Christian 
blanket,  cared  for  with  Christian  love  and  Chris- 
tian science,  and  protected  by  Christian  law.  The 
hundred  pounds  of  coal  in  her  mother's  base- 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


ment  were  left  there  because  Jesus  Christ  in- 
structed the  teamster  to  carry  them. 

How  did  this  come  to  pass  ?  It  came  to  pass, 
not  because  Ambrose  sang  the  "Te  Deum"  in 
Milan,  not  because  Saint  Augustine,  sitting  under 
a  pear-tree  in  Africa,  heard  God  speak  to  him; 
not  because  Gregory  or  anybody  organized  the 
Church;  not  because  Godfrey  of  Bouillon 
stormed  the  city  of  Jerusalem.  All  these  things 
helped  in  their  little  way.  But  here  is  not  the 
mystery  of  mysteries. 

The  world  breathes  more  and  more  of  the 
Holy  Spirit;  the  world  lives  in  a  larger  life  day 
by  day,  because  some  father  and  mother  in  the 
Black  Forest,  or  by  the  Guadalquivir  River,  or 
in  the  marshes  by  the  Elbe,  taught  their  little 
children  to  say  "Our  Father"  when  they  learned 
enough  to  pray.  It  is  because  the  story  of  the 
Prodigal  Son  was  painted  with  clumsy  art  upon 
the  window  of  this  church  or  that.  It  is  because 
some  dying  soldier  refused  the  cup  of  cold  water 
that  was  brought  him,  because  the  man  next  him 
needed  it  more.  It  was  because  some  mother, 
widowed  because  her  soldier-husband  had  died 
in  the  battle  of  Tiberias,  called  her  children 
around  her  and  read  them  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  and  told  them  that  in  a  battle  on  that 
mountain  their  father  had  been  killed,  and  that 
[186] 


HISTORY 

in  a  grave  on  that  mountain  he  was  buried.  It 
is  the  four  Gospels.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  four 
Gospels  which  makes  the  world  of  to-day.  And 
such  lessons  are  taught  to-day,  when  John  climbs 
five  flights  of  stairs  at  midnight  with  a  stove  and 
the  petroleum  which  are  to  heat  the  frozen  attic. 
Or  when,  in  a  drifting  snow-storm,  the  fireman 
on  the  engine  shovels  coal  into  his  furnace,  so 
that  your  children  may  have  milk  for  their 
breakfast  to-morrow.  Or  when  this  boy  or  that 
girl  have  tried  the  great  experiment  of  prayer, 
and  found  that  it  succeeded.  Or  when  a  lazy 
boy,  who  had  disobeyed  his  father,  remembered 
a  story  which  he  had  heard  about  such  a  boy, 
and  went  back  to  his  father  as  the  boy  in  the 
story  did.  Such  lessons  are  taught  when  some 
Dorcas  in  this  village  or  that  dressed  the 
wounds  of  a  soldier,  or  lighted  the  winter  fire  of 
a  blind  beggar,  or  cared  for  a  despised  deserter 
in  a  soldier's  prison.  The  old  heathen  reign  of 
each  for  himself  was  at  an  end.  For  the  dawn 
— though  it  was  only  the  dawn — of  the  Sun  of 
Righteousness  was  beginning  to  dapple  in  that 
black  sky.  Each  for  all;  not  he  for  himself, 
nor  I  for  myself.  As  it  proves  in  every  life, 
a  world  of  men  and  women,  sons  and  daughters 
of  God,  find  the  Way  of  Christ,  the  Son  of  God, 
the  Well  Beloved,  is  the  only  way,  and  in  that 
way  they  chose  to  journey. 


t  THE  PEOPLE* 


This  change,  or,  if  you  choose,  this  beginning 
of  a  change,  does  not  come  on  the  world  as  the 
world  is  instructed  in  intellectual  facts.  It  comes 
by  contagion.  Love  rules  the  court.  Love 
rules  the  camp,  because  a  brave  man  makes 
others  brave.  A  just  man  makes  others  just.  A 
pure  woman  makes  others  pure.  A  faithful 
woman  makes  others  faithful.  An  industrious 
woman  makes  others  industrious.  A  hopeful 
woman  makes  others  hope,  and  a  loving  woman 
makes  others  love.  All  this  is  said  more  simply 
when  the  Saviour  says,  "The  kingdom  of  heaven 
is  as  a  grain  of  mustard  seed."  You  plant  your 
seed,  and,  lo!  the  world  is  overshadowed.  Or 
it  is  said,  as  Isaiah  tells  you,  of  a  spark  in  the 
tinder,  that  because  no  one  extinguished  the 
spark  the  whole  was  in  a  blaze.  By  which  I 
mean  to  say  that  the  religion  of  "Our  Father 
who  art  in  heaven,"  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ, 
quickening  the  lives  of  John  and  Andrew  and 
Paul,  of  Mary  Magdalene  and  Salome  and  Dor- 
cas, worked  its  way  in  the  glad  contagion  of  life 
upon  life.  It  is  not  a  king  and  his  subjects.  It 
is  not  a  general  and  his  soldiers.  It  is  not  a 
teacher  and  his  pupils.  It  is  not  command  and 
obedience.  It  is  not  even  discipline.  It  is  life 
enlivening  life,  love  giving  birth  to  love,  truth 
compelling  truth.  It  is  fair  to  say,  as  a  modern 
[188] 


HISTORY 

author  has  said,  that,  while  the  logic  of  Saint 
Paul  has  never  converted  one  sinner,  the  parables 
of  the  four  Gospels  have  saved  a  world. 

THE  NEW  YEAR. 

IT  is  very  interesting  to  see  that  with  every 
year  the  people  who  live  in  the  world  think 
that  the  year  which  has  just  gone  by  has 
been  one  of  the  most  important  years  in 
history.     The  truth  is  that,  as  John  Sterling  said 
very  well, 

"Nature  always  gives  us  more  than  all  she  ever  takes  away." 

Anyway,  each  of  us  is  in  the  middle  of  a  world, 
and  what  he  sees  with  his  eyes  and  hears  with  his 
ears  affects  him  much  more  than  what  he  reads  in 
a  book,  than  what  is  told  by  a  grandfather,  or  the 
lesson  which  he  received  from  his  grandmother. 
The  reader  and  I  and  my  brothers  and  sisters 
and  the  reader's  father  and  mother  see  and  are 
seeing  and  will  see  certain  things  about  Caracas 
and  the  canal  across  the  isthmus  and  the  coal 
strike  and  the  last  blizzard  which  none  of  us 
see  about  what  happened  in  the  last  month  of 
1802  or  in  the  first  month  of  1803.  So  we  may 
well  hug  to  ourselves  the  opinion,  which  is  for 
us  true — that  the  end  of  1902  and  the  beginning 
of  1903  are  the  most  important  epochs  in  history. 

[189] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


To  my  mind  the  attention  called  by  the  sailors, 
the  soldiers,  and  the  statesmen  of  the  world  to 
peace  as  provided  for  in  the  two  great  peace 
congresses  of  the  last  ten  years,  is  the  interesting 
thing — that  is  to  say,  is  the  thing  of  central 
interest.  The  flies  who  ride  on  the  carriage  and 
think  themselves  very  important  sneer  and  laugh 
about  the  great  congress  at  The  Hague  and  its 
permanent  tribunal.  Indeed,  as  they  ride  along 
on  the  carriage  and  suppose  that  they  drive  it, 
these  same  buzz-about  flies  could  not  see  any- 
thing about  the  great  international  congress  in 
Mexico  which  bound  sixteen  more  states  to  sub- 
mit their  differences  to  The  Hague  tribunal. 
But  The  Hague  tribunal  did  not  take  much  care 
whether  the  buzz-about  flies  approved  or  did  not 
approve.  The  Hague  tribunal  went  to  work  and 
did  what  it  was  told  to  do.  And  just  now,  when 
there  is  real  danger  of  battle  and  fighting  and 
death,  the  public  do  care  and  a  few  of  the  leaders 
of  the  world  care  that  there  is  The  Hague  tri- 
bunal, which  has  been  arranged  by  the  Christian 
civilization  of  the  world  for  precisely  such  cir- 
cumstances. The  men  of  sense  find  them- 
selves where  they  always  find  themselves.  As 
Mr.  Wordsworth  says  so  well, 

"And  through  the  heat  of  conflict  keeps  the  law 
In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw." 

[  190] 


HISTORY 

If  anybody  would  take  the  trouble  to  read  the 
three  Hague  conventions,  he  will  find  that 
they  provide  first  that  before  any  fighting  has 
been,  every  case  at  issue  shall  be  left  to  the 
arbitrator. 

Second,  they  provide  that  if  all  the  parties  in 
the  case  at  issue  agree,  the  questions  at  issue  shall 
be  decided  by  the  International  Tribunal.  Third, 
they  provide  the  rules  by  which  war  shall  be 
carried  on  if  war  must  be  carried  on  at  all.  At 
the  moment  when  I  write  these  lines,  we  are  just 
in  a  position  where  Mr.  Roosevelt  is  to  deter- 
mine whether  he — which  means  he  and  his  ad- 
visers— will  act  as  arbitrator.  He  may  say  yes, 
or  he  may  say  no.  But  if  he  determines  that 
the  questions  at  issue  shall  be  submitted  to  the 
court  appointed  by  the  common  sense  of  the 
world,  the  court  is  ready  for  any  such  submission. 


[190 


SUNDAY    AND 
SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 


Sunday  and    Home 

HOW  SHALL  WE  SPEND  SUNDAY? 

DR.    PRIMROSE   was  travelling   from 
North  New  Padua,  which  is  his  home, 
to    the    City    of    Washington.     He 
thought  they  wanted  his  advice  in  the 
coal  commission,  but  he  does  not  travel  on  Sun- 
day, so  he  stayed  over  Sunday  in  Boston.  There 
he  learned  that  the  commission  had  gone  to 
Scranton,  so  he  did  not  hurry  on  his  journey, 
for  he  did  not  think  he  should  have  any  friend 
at  court  who  would  admit  him  into  the  coal 
mines.    And  so  it  happened  that  he  spent  the  next 
Sunday  in  New  York. 

Some  of  us  met  him  on  Monday  morning, 
and  we  asked  Dr.  Primrose  what  he  thought  of 
Sunday  life  in  cities.  The  dear  old  gentleman 
was  not  displeased,  and  lectured  at  some  length 
on  what  he  should  do  and  what  he  should  not  do 
about  Sunday  life  in  such  cities  as  Boston  and 
New  York,  if  it  so  happened  that  he  had  abso- 
lute power  given  to  him.  As  he  had  not  that 
power,  he  could  only  talk  about  it. 

[195] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


First  of  all,  he  said  that  he  thought  the 
Church  of  Rome  had  gone  one  better  than  most 
of  the  Protestant  churches,  by  its  care  in  having 
early  religious  services.  He  said  that  in  New 
York,  after  his  breakfast,  he  went  round  at  eight 
o'clock  to  one  of  the  largest  churches  that  he  was 
ever  in  in  his  life;  he  found  it  thronged  with 
earnest  and  intelligent  worshippers.  He  is  not 
a  Roman  Catholic  himself,  but  as  he  went  across 
from  there  to  attend  worship  in  the  Protestant 
church,  he  wondered  why  it  was  that  the  Protes- 
tant churches  of  New  York  and  Boston,  so  far 
as  he  observed  them,  were  not  open  for  worship 
before  half-past  ten.  So  the  dear  old  gentle- 
man went  back,  and  thought  of  the  praise  meet- 
ing he  once  conducted  in  Montana,  when  the 
sun  was  rising,  where  the  people  did  not  know 
what  religious  communion  they  did  belong  to. 
He  remembered  his  own  Sunday-school  in  North 
New  Padua,  where  two  hundred  and  seventy- 
nine  boys  and  girls  met  at  nine  o'clock  every 
Sunday  morning  and  sang  praises  and  repeated 
Psalms,  and  he  took  comfort  in  those  recollec- 
tions. Then  the  old  gentleman  forgot  that  he 
was  discussing  a  great  question  about  which  the 
ecclesiastics  find  it  hard  to  come  to  a  conclusion, 
but  he  fell  to  talking  about  some  things  which 
they  do  in  North  New  Padua  which  interested 
me,  and  I  wrote  them  down. 
[196] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


Among  other  things,  he  said  he  had  in 
his  parish  a  club,  or  society,  of  twenty  young  girls, 
some  of  whom  were  twelve  years  old  and  some 
of  them  were  seventeen.  It  seemed  they  were 
bound  by  their  compact  not  to  live  for  what  is 
called  self-improvement  or  self-culture,  but  to 
be  of  some  use  to  other  people.  And  as  they 
went  and  came,  they  had,  half  in  joke  at  first, 
but  afterward  in  earnest,  adopted  a  grand- 
mother, and  then  they  adopted  another  grand- 
mother, and  at  the  moment  Dr.  Primrose  was 
talking  they  had  adopted  six  grandmothers. 
This  meant  that  in  the  country  town  like  North 
New  Padua  Alice  coaxed  papa  to  let  her  have 
the  carryall  and  Old  White  Face,  and  drove  up 
to  grandmother's  and  took  grandmother  to  ride. 
Or  Bertha  carried  up  some  cake  and  ice  cream 
from  her  mother's  party  of  the  night  before. 
Or  Clara  carried  up  a  bunch  of  chrysanthemums 
from  her  mother's  garden.  In  each  case,  the 
grandmother  was  a  poor  old  woman  who  lived 
two  or  three  miles  away  from  the  village,  and 
if  these  nice  girls  had  not  kept  her  life  bright 
it  would  have  been  very  stupid. 

Dr.  Primrose  said  that  as  he  went  and  came 
in  his  passage,  he  wondered  how  many  of  the 
famous  clubs  in  Boston  were  engaged  in  that  sort 
of  work  on  a  Sunday  afternoon,  and  whether  it 

[  197] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


would  not  be  as  well  if  the  Sunday-school  teach- 
ers, after  they  had  explained  the  first  chapter  of 
the  Gospel  according  to  Saint  John,  had  quick- 
ened the  girls  into  some  way  by  which  they  could 
spend  two  or  three  hours  of  an  afternoon  in  tak- 
ing care  of  a  grandmother  perhaps,  in  visiting 
that  poor  girl  who  burned  her  hand  with  kero- 
sene last  week,  or  in  translating  a  letter  for  the 
Frenchman  who  wanted  to  know  what  had  be- 
come of  his  brother's  property.  He  said  he 
thought  that  if  on  Sunday  afternoon  people 
could  not  make  just  the  excuses  they  make  on 
other  days,  they  could  get  acquainted  themselves 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  Then 
they  all  fell  to  talking  about  the  supposed  separa- 
tion between  business  and  religion,  and  Dr. 
Primrose  made  a  revelation  about  the  condition 
of  affairs  in  North  New  Padua  which  made  one 
ask  whether  some  similar  arrangement  could  not 
be  made  in  New  York  and  Boston.  He  said 
that  the  people  of  his  church  were  well  in  the 
habit  in  that  northeast  section  of  Aroostook 
County  of  going  to  two  religious  services  every 
Sunday.  They  had  what  they  called  a  Nooning 
House  just  outside  the  church.  It  was  a  cabin, 
half  logs,  half  slabs,  where  the  women  had  a 
cup  of  strong  green  tea,  baked  beans,  and  cold 
pork  with  bread  and  butter.  Now  in  this  Noon- 
[198] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


ing  House  one  hundred  and  fifty  people  spent  a 
part  of  the  two  hours  between  the  services;  but 
there  was  a  good  hour  which  was  not  spent  in 
tea  drinking.  And  the  men  and  the  women  who 
had  any  heads  had  got  into  the  habit  of  meeting 
there  to  talk  over  village  affairs;  whatever  there 
was  in  the  life  of  the  village  that  needed  atten- 
tion, like  the  planting  of  new  trees,  the  laying  of 
water  mains,  or  the  drainage  down  at  the  com- 
mon; what  should  be  done  with  those  French 
Canadians,  whether  there  was  any  danger  of  fire 
when  people  burned  their  brush  in  the  autumn. 
This  came  to  be  a  habit  with  the  North  New 
Padua  people;  it  was  a  sort  of  informal  town 
meeting  once  a  week,  which  would  straighten 
things  out  which  would  otherwise  have  been  left 
crooked. 

It  was  clear  enough  that  as  the  old  gen- 
tleman had  made  a  sort  of  apostolic  walk 
through  Boston  streets,  it  had  occurred  to  him 
that  if  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  better  men 
of  the  ward,  with  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  the 
better  women,  could  be  got  together  on  Sunday 
afternoon,  with  a  sort  of  conversational  discus- 
sion about  the  needs  of  the  wards,  the  political 
leaders  would  have  to  come  to  it,  and  the  doctors 
would  have  to  come  to  it,  and  the  cranks  in  gen- 
eral would  have  to  come  to  it,  and  some  of  the 

[  199] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


reformers  of  society  would  come  to  it.  He 
thought  that  in  New  York  or  Boston  a  hun- 
dred such  meetings  in  a  hundred  local  centres 
would  be  a  good  occupation  of  the  hour  between 
four  and  five  o'clock  Sunday  afternoon.  But  I 
would  not  let  him  talk  about  this.  I  prodded 
him  up  to  know  what  we  had  better  do  in  New 
York  and  Boston  on  Sunday  evening.  The  old 
gentleman's  face  lighted  up  with  great  pleasure, 
and  he  went  back  to  forty  years  ago,  to  the  time 
when  Cooper  Institute  was  built.  He  said  he 
was  younger  then  and  that  somebody  asked  him 
to  preach  there  of  a  Sunday  evening.  He  said  that 
large  Cooper  Institute  was  crowded  with  people, 
mostly  men.  They  had  never  heard  of  him, 
they  had  never  heard  of  North  New  Padua,  but 
they  had  heard  of  the  Lord  God  and  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  they  knew  how  to  sing.  Nobody 
asked  them  to  sign  any  book  when  they  went  in, 
nobody  asked  them  for  any  money  when  they 
went  out.  It  was  clear  enough  that  Dr.  Prim- 
rose thought  they  were  better  men  and  the  com- 
munity a  better  community  because  that  hap- 
ened.  When  I  told  the  old  gentleman  that  just 
the  same  thing  happened  in  the  Cooper  Institute 
now,  he  was  very  much  pleased,  but  he  asked 
me  why  instead  of  one  such  place  or  ten  such 
places  in  a  city  like  New  York  or  a  city  like  Bos- 
[  200  ] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


ton,  there  were  not  five  hundred  every  Sunday 
evening.     I  did  not  know. 

THE  IDEAL  SUNDAY. 

IT  is  no  longer  with  the  desire  to  compel  peo- 
ple to  go  to  meeting  or  to  church  that  our 
present  statutes   are   devised.      All   that 
effort  has  been  weeded  out  from  them.  It 
is  rather  with  the  intention  to  leave  everybody 
free  to  go  to  public  worship,  and  free  to  rest  if 
he  wants  to  rest.     It  is  an  effort  to  relax  all 
chains  on  that  day.     I  am  old  enough  to  remem- 
ber when  poor  debtors,  who  had  to  reside  in  the 
jail   limits  on  week-days,  availed  themselves  of 
this  statute  on  Sunday  and  went  where  they  chose 
on  visits  to  their  friends.     That  liberation  is  a 
type  of  the  whole  plan. 

The  apprentice  could  not  be  compelled  to 
work,  nor  the  journeyman.  Stage  drivers,  fer- 
rymen, hostlers,  and  grooms  even,  were  at  large. 
People  who  lived  in  and  near  taverns  were  not  to 
be  annoyed  by  the  racket  of  revellers.  Churches 
were  not  to  be  annoyed  by  the  passage  of 
vehicles. 

I  am  fond  of  telling  my  children  the  story  of 
the  arrest  by  one  of  their  ancestors  of  the  Rus- 
sian Ambassador  and  his  party,  who  had  landed 
[201  ] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


in  some  seaboard  town  and  were  crossing  the 
country.  Ignorant  or  indifferent  to  our  laws, 
they  pressed  their  way  to  the  seat  of  the  Gov- 
ernment on  the  Lord's  Day.  But  they  found 
that  a  Connecticut  tithing-man  stopped  them. 
He  held  that  the  journey  was  not  one  of  charity 
or  of  necessity. 

Of  which  the  latent  desire  was  not  that  the 
Ambassador  should  go  to  meeting,  but  simply 
that  those  that  did  should  not  be  annoyed  by 
the  rattle  of  his  wheels;  that  the  people  of  the 
inns  should  have  only  the  minimum  of  care,  and 
in  general  that  everybody  should  be  as  free  to 
rest  himself  as  he  chose  on  Sunday,  as  was  pos- 
sible under  every  condition  short  of  a  return  to 
barbarous  life. 

I  think  that  every  conscientious  man,  every 
leader  of  society,  must  make  up  his  mind  whether 
he  thinks  public  worship  one  day  in  seven  a  good 
thing  or  a  bad  thing,  and  whether  he  considers 
this  Sunday  rest,  as  protected  by  statute,  a  good 
thing  or  a  bad  thing.  As  matter  of  feeling  or 
theory,  most  men  agree  here. 

Most  young  lawyers  would  say  they  are  glad 
there  is  one  day  when  they  need  not  go  to  their 
offices ;  most  young  clerks  that  they  are  glad  that 
on  that  day  they  need  not  go  to  their  stores,  and 
so  on.  As  a  matter  of  feeling  and  theory,  yes. 
[  202  ] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


Nay,  as  a  matter  of  feeling  and  theory,  almost 
all  these  persons  would  be  sorry  to  have  public 
worship  abandoned;  most,  not  all. 

Some  people  would  not  care.  Addressing 
those  who  did  care,  I  should  say:  You  must 
make  this  a  matter  of  action  also.  You  have 
no  right  to  take  the  comfort  of  Sunday,  and  then 
to  leave  to  the  ministers,  to  your  father  and 
mother,  and  to  the  women  of  the  community,  the 
maintaining  of  Sunday. 

When  a  club  of  high-minded,  moral,  and 
intelligent  young  men  mount  their  bicycles  on 
Sunday  morning,  by  public  appointment,  for  a 
race  of  fifty  miles  before  night  they  say  far  more 
distinctly  than  any  words  or  votes  could  say,  that 
so  far  as  they  are  concerned  they  mean  that  the 
next  century  shall  have  no  Sunday. 

Courts  are  not  to  be  closed,  stores  shut  up, 
sheriffs  kept  back  from  executing  writs,  in  order 
that  young  gentlemen  may  ride  all  day  on 
bicycles.  The  institution  of  Sunday,  if  it  is  to  be 
maintained  at  all,  will  be  maintained  for  the 
nobler  purposes  of  higher  life.  And,  while  it  is 
quite  legitimate  to  urge  that  the  art  museum, 
the  public  library,  the  concert,  may  tend  to  this 
higher  life,  nobody  will  accept  the  plea  which 
says  that  a  feat  of  laborious  athletics  is  a  bit  of 
the  higher  life.  Every  such  effort  to  get  over 
[203  ] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


the  line  helps  the  way  to  the  secularization  of  all 
days,  when  there  will  be  no  time  at  all. 

I  have  refrained  from  any  argument  of  the 
divine  appointment  of  Sunday.  I  have  been  dis- 
cussing the  worth  not  of  the  Hebrew  Sabbath, 
but  of  the  Massachusetts  Sunday,  which  is  a  very 
different  thing.  I  do  not  urge  that  men  should 
rest  from  labor  one  day  in  seven  because  God 
rested  after  six  acts  of  creation.  But  I  ought 
to  say  that  so  far  as  history  avouches  law  as 
divine,  all  the  history  of  Sunday  pleads  for  the 
sort  of  rest  which  I  am  urging. 

More  suggestive  than  any  thunder  of  Sinai, 
and  more  convincing  than  any  argument  of 
Moses,  is  the  steadiness  with  which  the  seventh 
day  of  rest  worked  itself  into  the  civilization  of 
Europe.  Men  despised  the  Jews;  they  ridi- 
culed and  caricatured  them;  they  spurned  them 
in  the  street;  they  degraded  them  in  society,  but 
they  took  from  them  this  institution.  Before 
Christianity  got  its  hold  on  Rome,  the  one  day 
in  seven  captured  Rome. 

A  nation  which  gave  masters  power  to  crucify 
their  slaves  was  not  strong  enough  to  keep  slaves 
from  the  enjoyment  of  this  rest  one  day  in  the 
week. 

No  movement  of  our  times  for  a  ten-hour  sys- 
tem, for  an  early  closing  system,  for  the  relief 
[204] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


of  children  in  factories,  ever  approached  this 
great  determination  of  a  working  world  that  it 
would  rest  from  its  labors  when  a  seventh  day 
came  around.  Observe,  no  statesman  directed 
that  movement.  No  philosopher  suggested  it. 
Only  a  few  dirty  and  despised  Jews,  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  Tiber,  if  they  were  in  Rome, 
rested  on  the  seventh  day. 

The  good  sense  of  the  thing,  the  good  effect 
of  the  thing,  captured  even  the  scoffers  and  the 
tyrants;  and  they  accepted  the  boon,  which 
proved  to  be  the  new  life  of  their  social  order. 

I  only  ask  men  to  look  around  and  see  if  that 
lesson  is  not  re-enforced  on  every  side.  By  their 
fruits  shall  ye  know  institutions  as  well  as  men. 

Is  not  the  town  or  village  where  workman 
and  prince,  boy  and  man,  rest  heartily  on  Sun- 
day, and  make  Sunday  a  day  for  the  refreshing 
of  man's  best  nature — is  it  not  a  place  palpably 
and  certainly  in  advance  of  the  other  community, 
wherever  you  find  it,  which  struggles  against  the 
stream  of  a  world's  experience,  and  tries  to  re- 
duce Sunday  to  the  common  level? 

"To  labor  is  to  pray,"  the  monkish  proverb 
says.  Sometimes  it  is,  sometimes  it  is  not.  The 
motive  makes  it  prayer — or  devil  service.  Of 
course,  I  may  say  the  same  of  rest  and  labor.  It 
may  be  the  nastiness  of  Circe's  stye.  But  every 

[205] 


',  THE  PEOPLE" 


one  of  us  knows  it  may  bring  the  closest  vision, 
it  may  bring  the  noblest  resolution,  it  may  bring 
the  highest  life. 

To  leave  the  clatter  of  my  own  anvil ;  nay,  to 
turn  from  the  echoes  of  my  own  thoughts,  to 
go  away  from  friends  or  disciples,  it  may  be,  as 
the  Prince  of  Men  retired  in  his  need — this  is 
to  seek  God.  And  they  who  seek  Him,  surely 
they  shall  find  Him,  if  thus  they  seek  for  Him 
with  all  their  hearts. 

SUNDAY  IN  CITIES. 

IN  the  last  article   I   blocked   out   a   plan 
which  I  would  make  for  any  American 
city  of  more  than  two  hundred  thousand 
people,  as  to  its  Sunday  services. 
Naturally  enough,  from  the  history  of  most  of 
our  towns,  we  have,  say,  one  church  for  every 
two  thousand  people ;  and,  so  far  as  I  have  ever 
seen,  these  churches  are  well  administered  up  to 
a  certain  point.     That  is  to  say,  the  democratic 
principle  had  asserted  itself;  people  have  got 
what  they  wanted.     All  the  same,  however,  in 
a  city  of  two  hundred  thousand  people  with  its 
twenty  churches  there  are  twenty  clubs  of  per- 
sons who  already  have  established  a  residence  in 
the  town.     They  are  persons  who  know  each 
[206] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


other,  and  who  to  a  certain  extent  bear  each 
other's  burdens.  Their  children  dance  in  the 
same  quadrilles  or  meet  in  the  same  parties,  or 
go  out  of  town  on  the  same  picnics.  The 
church  association  is  one  tie  which  unites  people 
who  are  united  in  other  ties. 

Bishop  Hamilton,  who  is  one  of  the  wisest 
men  I  know,  said  once  in  a  public  meeting  where 
he  and  I  both  spoke,  that  the  Protestant  Church 
of  New  England  is  well  organized  for  the  pur- 
poses of  religious  worship,  it  is  well  organized 
for  the  purposes  of  religious  education,  it  is  well 
organized  for  the  purposes  of  missions,  but  it  is 
not  organized  at  all  for  the  purposes  of  hospital- 
ity to  strangers  and  of  charity  to  the  poor.  I 
think  this  is  true,  speaking  in  general. 

Here  in  Boston  I  think  that  our  Baptist 
friends  have  had  the  most  success  in  the  business 
of  making  strangers  in  Boston  feel  at  home.  I 
think  that  the  great  assemblages  in  Tremont 
Temple  and  In  Ruggles  Street  Church  are  good 
illustrations  of  what  the  Church  of  Christ  ought 
to  do  in  welcoming  people  who  are  not  to  the 
manner  bred.  Now,  at  this  moment,  as  the 
Associated  Charities  report  of  last  Thursday 
shows,  we  have  fifty  nationalities  in  Boston. 

See  the  statistics  of  the  nationality  of  the  girls 
who  attend  the  Hancock-Cushman  School  at  the 
[207] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


North  End.  In  the  last  year  of  which  I  have 
returns,  three-quarters  of  these  girls  were  Russian 
Jews,  half  the  remainder  were  German  Jews, 
and  the  rest  were  Arabs,  Italians,  Bulgarians, 
Roumanians,  and  Armenians.  There  was  not 
one  girl  who  could  speak  English  in  all  the  three 
hundred  and  six  who  entered  the  school  at  one 
time.  That  is  an  illustration  of  the  "all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men  and  women"  whom  we 
have  here  in  Boston. 

There  are  lying  in  this  harbor  at  the  present 
moment  five-and-twenty  coal-ships  waiting  for 
wharfage.  Only  to-day  I  have  a  memorandum 
given  me  which  tells  me  who  the  officers  on  some 
of  these  coal-ships  are — God-fearing,  intelligent 
young  men,  who  are  kicking  their  heels  in  Boston 
while  we  find  a  chance  for  them  to  land  their 
coal.  I  think  that  there  ought  to  be  some- 
body whose  business  it  is  to  meet  these  men, 
to  meet  their  seamen,  to  see  that  the  sea- 
men do  not  go  to  the  dogs,  and  that 
the  officers  themselves  are  cordially  welcomed. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  board  of  charities  of 
the  South  Congregational  Church,  or  of  the  Old 
South  meeting-house,  or  of  the  Catholic  cathe- 
dral, or  of  the  German  Mission  of  the  Reformed 
Church  in  the  United  States,  or  of  the  Union 
Rescue  Mission,  or  of  the  Advent  Christian 
[208] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


Mission,  or  of  the  Christadelphians,  or  the  Jesse 
Lee  Church,  or  of  the  Seventh  Day  Advent 
Church,  or  of  the  Society  for  the  Expression  of 
the  Christ  Ideal,  have  paid  the  slightest  atten- 
tion to  the  presence  of  the  twenty-five  masters, 
the  fifty  mates,  of  the  seventy-five  engineers  and 
engineers'  assistants,  or  of  the  five  or  ten  thou- 
sand emigrants  who  arrived  in  Boston  at  the 
same  time  on  the  ships  which  these  men  conduct- 
ed. I  do  know  one  Christian  man  and  his  wife 
who  put  themselves  in  attendance  on  one  steam- 
ship of  these  people  because  they  love  God  and 
love  men. 

Now,  I  think  that  the  organized  churches  of 
Boston  ought  to  begin  with  a  Sunday  service 
somewhere  down-town  which  should  attract 
these  people,  if  it  attracted  nobody  else.  As  I 
said  at  the  Unitarian  Club  a  week  ago,  I  would 
have  this  in  the  Old  South  meeting-house,  but 
that  some  dear  old  gentlemen  who  have  now  all 
gone  to  heaven  put  some  absurd  conditions  on 
the  use  of  that  meeting-house  twenty-six  years 
ago,  so  that  for  four  years  more  there  will  be 
that  spot  on  that  one  acre  of  ground  on  the 
American  continent  from  which  prayer  and  praise 
cannot  go  up  to  God  on  the  Lord's  Day.  There 
is  a  certain  humor  in  this  restriction  which  would 
have  amused  Saint  Paul. 
[209] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


I  want  also  to  have  a  central  office  where  the 
Christian  Church  shall  do  its  business,  exactly  as 
the  United  States  has  a  central  office  of  Boston 
in  Post-Office  Square,  where  it  attends  to  the  car- 
riage of  mails.  When  I  have  a  letter  for  Tyngs- 
boro,  I  do  not  have  to  hunt  up  a  Tyngsboro 
agent  who  will  carry  my  letter  there.  I  go 
to  the  post-office,  and  put  it  into  the  post- 
office,  and  they  attend  to  it  there.  If  I  am 
a  shipmaster  bringing  over  a  family,  of  which 
the  father  dies  on  the  passage,  I  do  not  want, 
when  I  arrive  in  Boston,  to  hunt  up  a  "society 
for  the  provision  of  the  widow  whose  husband 
has  died  on  the  November  passage  from  Eng- 
land." I  want  to  go  to  the  office  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  What  I  propose  is  that  the  twen- 
ty-five Unitarian  churches  of  Greater  Boston 
shall  establish  such  an  office. 

The  Lord  Jesus,  when  He  was  in  Palestine, 
proposed  some  such  arrangement;  but  He  says 
that  one  of  the  people  whom  He  invited  to  join 
in  the  entertainment  said  he  had  married  a  wife, 
and  he  could  not  come.  Another  of  them  had 
bought  a  yoke  of  oxen;  and,  therefore,  he  could 
not  come.  What  I  observe  is  this,  that,  when 
this  particular  widow,  of  whom  I  have  spoken, 
sends  up  to  St.  George  Society,  the  St.  George 
Society  says  that  she  was  born  in  Norway,  and 
[210] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


that  they  cannot  attend  to  her.  When  she  sends 
to  the  Scandinavian  Society,  it  probably  proves 
that  their  hours  are  between  quarter  past  eleven 
on  Wednesday  and  quarter  before  twelve.  When 
she  sends  to  me,  as  she  has  a  right  to,  at  39 
Highland  Street,  she  finds  that  I  have  gone  to 
Buffalo.  When  she  sends  to  the  head  of  the 
city  charities,  he  asks  her  whether  her  husband 
has  paid  taxes  for  five  years  out  of  ten  years  in 
the  city  of  Boston.  If  she  sends  to  my  excellent 
friend,  Archbishop  Williams,  he  says  that  she 
was  not  baptized  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
and  has  not  been  to  confession  for  twenty-one 
years, — or,  as  it  simply  said  in  an  old  book  a 
good  deal  used  when  I  was  a  boy,  "They  all  with 
one  accord  began  to  make  excuses."  What  I 
am  trying  to  establish  is  an  office  where  they  shall 
not  make  excuses,  where  I  shall  not  be  told 
that  any  child  of  God  ought  to  have  been  born 
in  some  place  where  she  was  not  born,  or  ought 
to  be  sixty-three  years  old  when  she  is  only  forty- 
five. 

At  this  moment  we  have  on  our  list  here  a 
widow  who  is  more  than  the  necessary  age ;  that 
is,  she  is  more  than  sixty-five  years  old.  Her 
two  husbands  have  both  been  Americans.  She 
was  born  in  Boston.  Her  father  was  born  in 
Boston,  and  he  worked  on  the  frigate  Constitu- 

[211] 


"WE,   THE  PEOPLE' 


tion.  Her  sixty-four  ancestors  in  Winthrop's 
time  were  all,  so  far  as  anybody  can  show,  resi- 
dents of  Boston.  Between  them  and  her  are 
nine  generations,  making,  as  I  calculate,  two  hun- 
dred and  eighty-eight  ancestors  of  hers  who,  for 
all  anybody  can  say,  were  all  born  in  Boston. 
And  she  cannot  receive  her  coal  from  the  Ashton 
Widows'  Coal  Fund  because  her  tenement  is  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  dividing  line  in  Charles- 
town,  which  separates  the  sheep  from  the  goats ; 
that  is,  which  separates  the  Charlestown  widow, 
who  can  receive  Ashton  Fund  Coal,  from  the 
Somerville  widow,  who  cannot  receive  Ashton 
Fund  coal.  It  is  so  desirable  to  have  packed 
in  within  the  limits  of  that  old  Boston  peninsula 
all  the  widows  and  orphans  whom  we  can  that 
we  encourage  them  by  a  bounty  to  move  this 
side  of  our  somewhat  crowded  lines  1 

"EVERYMAN." 

THE  performance  of  a  miracle  play  by 
an  English  company  in  our  different 
cities  suggests  a  great  deal  to  those 
interested  in  religious  education.  The 
performance  is  dignified,  serious  and  fits  the  real 
purpose  of  those  leaders  of  the  people  who  con- 
trived such  performances  in  the   "dark  ages." 
[212] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


Like  the  recent  revivals  of  Ben  Jonson,  for  in- 
stance, the  miracle  play  of  "Everyman"  might 
now  be  studied  to  advantage  by  one  who  was 
only  a  virtuoso  or  dilletante,  to  learn  how  they 
did  things  five  centuries  ago.  But  I  doubt  if 
any  person  who  attends  with  that  poor  virtuoso 
notion  does  not  come  away  with  the  serious  ques- 
tion whether  the  play  cannot  teach  us  all  that 
is  good  for  us,  and  whether  it  cannot  show  us 
how  we  can  teach  those  who  are  in  our  charge. 
The  attendants  at  these  performances  are  better 
men  and  better  women  for  attending. 

The  programme  of  "Everyman"  gives  a  good 
idea  of  the  plan  of  the  play.  But  it  is  hard  to 
give  one  who  has  not  seen  it  an  idea  of  the  seri- 
ousness, often  the  delicacy,  with  which  the  simple 
lessons  are  unfolded. 

Everyman  is  surprised  in  the  heyday  of  life 
by  the  discovery  that  he  has  a  Pilgrim's  Progress 
before  him,  and  at  the  end  of  it  he  must  die 
and  give  some  sort  of  account  of  his  life.  He 
summons  various  companions  and  advisers  to 
assist  him  and  go  with  him.  Some  of  them  fail, 
some  of  them  help  him.  At  last,  in  the  robe 
of  contrition,  under  the  guidance  of  Wisdom  and 
Good  Works,  he  dies.  He  descends  into  the 
grave;  and  the  chorus,  re-enforced  by  an  angel, 
tells  you  that  he  is  welcomed  into  heaven. 

[213] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Well,  between  the  year  1400  and  the  year 
1903  this  has  been  said  substantially  in  books 
and  from  the  pulpit  ten  million  times  by  ten  mil- 
lion teachers.  These  miracle  play  people  suc- 
ceeded in  representing  it  in  an  hour  and  a  half 
to  the  people  who  saw  their  play,  so  that  they  saw 
it  and  never  forgot  it.  It  was  a  case  of  "seeing, 
they  shall  see,"  as  the  Saviour  said  of  His  para- 
bles. In  this  admirable  representation  "Every- 
man" is  admirably  and  most  seriously  represent- 
ed. Any  criticism  would  be  trivial  which  should 
occupy  itself  in  improvement  of  detail,  as  if  one 
should  suggest  improvement  in  the  literary  style 
of  Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress." 

It  is  interesting  to  see  that,  while  the  very 
title  of  the  play  shows  that  "every  man"  has 
one  and  the  same  duty,  the  Catholic  Church,  so 
long  as  it  was  Catholic,  taught  that  "every  man" 
was  received  on  his  contrition  and  penitence  into 
the  joys  of  heaven.  The  Catholic  Church  then, 
at  least,  was  Universalist. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  witness  the  play,  so 
well  represented  by  this  company,  without  ob- 
serving that  any  play,  outside  of  mere  farce  or 
burlesque,  every  play  that  is  good  for  anything, 
is  occupied  with  just  the  conditions,  trials,  fail- 
ures, and  successes  of  every  man  as  he  deals  with 
kindred  or  riches  or  knowledge.  The  idea — 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


almost  ludicrous — of  a  play  or  a  book  which 
has  no  object,  except  to  be  a  play  or  a  book, 
wholly  disappears. 

Whether  young  people  in  their  passion  for 
"dramatics" — a  very  natural  and  worthy  passion 
— cannot  be  set  on  some  play  which  shall  carry 
with  it  lessons  as  vividly  portrayed  as  these,  that 
is  a  question  which  suggests  itself  even  to  the 
most  rationalistic  of  Protestants. 

In  the  "secondly"  of  a  well-contrived  dis- 
course next  Sunday  the  decorous  preacher  will 
say:  "If  this  were  the  proper  place,  I  would 
illustrate  what  I  say  by  giving  in  some  detail 
the  experience  of  a  young  sailor  whom  I  met 
last  week.  I  must  reserve  his  interesting  nar- 
rative for  some  other  occasion.  But,  briefly 
stated,  I  may  with  propriety  say  here  that  in 
the  wild  excitement  of  shipwreck  his  personality 
fused  itself  into  individuality,  and,  by  the  asser- 
tion of  his  subconsciousness,  or,  possibly,  of  some 
aspiration  or  newer  reflection  deeper  and  larger 
than  subconsciousness,  he  entered  into  a  condi- 
tion," etc.;  the  reader  knows  it  all  too  well. 

If  by  good  luck  this  preacher  should  go  and 
see  the  visible  presentation  of  moral  truth  in 
"Everyman,"  he  will  omit  this  metaphysical  pas- 
sage when  he  carries  the  sermon  to  the  church 
in  New  Norumbega,  and  will  tell  the  story  of  the 

[215] 


THE  PEOPLE" 


shipwrecked  sailor  boy.     "Therefore,  speak  I  to 
them  in  parables." 

RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION. 

T    T  NDER  the  suggestion  of  some  of  the 

U       leaders  of  opinion  in  Chicago,  a  com- 
mission has  been  formed  to  call  a  con- 
vention which  will  be  held  next  Feb- 
ruary or  March  in  that  city.     The  object  of  this 
convention  is  nothing  less  than  improving  the 
religious  and  moral  education  of  the  American 
people.     It  seems  to  be  frankly  recognized  that 
the  average  Sunday-school  of  the  country  does 
not  do  as  much  as  it  might  do  in  the  way  of 
moral  and  religious  education. 

There  is  also,  I  think,  a  feeling  that  as  the 
community  generally  lays  aside  Sunday  with  the 
express  wish  that  the  life  of  men  may  be  en- 
larged and  made  more  spiritual,  more  religious, 
and  more  moral,  methods  might  be  found  of 
using  Sunday  to  more  advantage.  Anyway,  the 
meeting  of  the  convention  is  now  assured,  and 
it  is  certain  that  it  will  bring  together  many  of 
the  most  thoughtful  men  and  women  of  the 
country  and  many  of  its  best  educators. 

The  question,  then,  of  the  best  use  of  Sunday 
is  an  open  question  which  ought  to  engage  the 

[216] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


attention  of  conscientious  people  and  of  the 
newspapers  and  the  magazines.  Here  are  fif- 
teen hours  of  life  taken  out  from  the  pressure  of 
daily  cares  so  that  the  people  of  this  country 
may  be  better  men  and  women,  better  fitted  for 
the  duties  of  life  and  good  citizenship.  If  Sun- 
day does  not  do  this,  all  our  Sunday  laws  in 
every  State  should  be  modified — perhaps  should 
be  swept  away  altogether.  What  can  we  do 
about  it?  That  is  an  open  question,  an  open 
question  of  more  importance  than  ever  before. 

I  should  like  to  start  a  symposium  of  my  own 
in  which  I  could  get  the  real  opinions  of  one 
hundred  sensible  ministers,  men  who  employ 
many  young  people,  women  who  are  mothers  of 
hundreds  of  children.  I  should  like  to  ask  them 
whether  in  the  hour  or  two  now  given  to  work 
in  Sunday-schools  other  arrangements  could  not 
be  made  for  more  life  which  one  could  fairly  call 
divine  life  than  on  the  average  are  made  now. 
And  if  I  had  a  hundred  such  people  sitting  down 
around  me  and  we  had  passed  that  time  when 
people  are  afraid  of  each  other  and  are  really 
willing  to  talk,  I  should  suggest  this  thing  to 
one  or  two  hundred  thousand  of  such  persons. 

i.  The  study  of  natural  history  on  Sunday 
is  a  study  which  might  be  pressed  much  farther 
than  it  is  now  pressed.  I  think  the  most  suc- 
[217] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


cessful  class  for  all  results  of  which  I  have  ever 
had  any  experience,  was  a  summer  class  of  street 
boys  who  came  to  our  church  at  ten  o'clock  on 
Sunday  through  the  summer.  They  read  their 
Bible  lesson,  they  sang  a  hymn,  and  then  their 
teacher  took  them  out  into  the  pleasant  wooded 
country,  which  we  can  now  reach  very  near  to 
Boston.  They  took  their  lunch  with  them.  The 
teacher  was  a  spirited  fellow,  now  an  efficient 
preacher  of  the  Gospel.  He  gained  a  close  inti- 
macy with  those  boys,  he  was  able  to  show  them 
how  God  is  at  work  in  the  world  now,  and  they 
went  to  their  morning  work,  for  they  were  boys 
who  had  to  work  through  the  summer — better 
boys  the  next  morning  because  he  had  taken 
them  into  this  communion  with  God. 

I  should  say  that  one  of  the  most  successful 
classes  which  ever  met  in  our  own  church  was 
a  class  sustained  for  two  or  three  winters  by 
Professor  Amadeus  Grabau.  He  talked  famil- 
iarly and  easily  with  the  men  and  women  who 
met  together,  on  such  subjects  as  these,  "How 
God  Made  New  England,"  and  the  kindred 
subjects  which  relate  themselves  to  this.  I  know 
that  he  implanted  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
these  people  intelligent  notions  with  regard  to 
the  study  of  nature  which  guided  them  in  after 
life,  and  to  this  day  I  receive  the  thanks  of  the 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


members  of  that  class  to  be  communicated  to 
their  teacher. 

2.  In  the  Non-Conformist  Sunday-schools  of 
England,  before  the  more  recent  enlargement  of 
public  education  in  England,  they  did  not  hesitate 
to  use  Sunday  for  teaching  the  children  who  came 
together,  or  the  men  and  women  who  came  to- 
gether, anything  which  would  be  of  use  to  them. 
They  taught  them  to  spell,  they  taught  them  to 
read,  they  taught  them  how  many  pecks  there 
were  in  a  bushel,  and  how  many  quarts  in  a  gal- 
lon; they  taught  them  Latin  if  they  wanted  to 
learn  it,  or  they  taught  them  Greek.  It  seems 
to  me  that  any  church  is  well  engaged  which  will 
make  such  arrangements  for  Sunday  as  shall 
guide  intelligent  boys  and  girls,  or  intelligent 
young  men  and  women  in  this  way.  You  need 
not  mix  it  up  with  any  pretence.  You  need  not 
say  that  they  are  learning  to  read  the  Testament 
in  Greek  because  they  are  learning  Greek.  They 
are  learning  Greek  because  they  want  to  and  be- 
cause the  good  God  gives  them  the  desire  to  en- 
large their  lives  on  every  side.  Or  suppose  they 
are  learning  the  history  of  America,  or  suppose 
they  are  learning  the  history  of  the  world,  is 
there  any  law,  divine  or  human,  which  should 
say  that  they  shall  not  learn  this  on  Sunday  as 
well  as  on  Monday  or  Tuesday?  And  if  the 
[219] 


THE  PEOPLE" 


teacher  is  willing  to  consecrate  the  hours  of  Sun- 
day in  this  way,  any  church  ought  to  be  willing 
to  encourage  that  teacher. 

SUNDAY  AND  MONDAY. 

AS  I  understand  it,  on  the  loth  of  February 
there  will  meet  a  congress  of  educators 
at  Chicago,  to  consider  the  great  ques- 
tions connected  with  public  education 
in  its  relations  to  morals  and  religion. 

If  the  congress  carries  forward  the  best  sug- 
gestions of  the  committee  which  has  called  it,  it 
will  not  omit  a  very  real  and  important  step, 
worthy  of  the  century  and  of  the  country. 

The  National  Bill  of  Rights,  as  the  early  arti- 
cles of  amendment  to  the  Constitution  have  been 
called,  may  be  called  "The  Bill  of  Rights  of  the 
Nation."  The  First  Amendment  provides  that 
Congress  shall  pass  no  laws  regulating  Religion 
in  the  several  States. 

Rightly  or  not,  this  provision  has  been  inter- 
preted as  meaning  that  no  State  shall  pass  such 
laws,  although  it  does  not  make  any  such  state- 
ment. Certainly  there  is  a  general  repugnance 
to  legislation  which  shall  give  any  advantage  to 
Jew  over  Gentile,  to  Christian  over  Jew,  or  to 
Mormon  over  agnostic,  in  the  discipline  of  the 
[  220  ] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


public  schools.  We  certainly  have  no  objection 
to  this  repugnance.  The  humblest  citizen  has 
that  equality  with  the  most  honored  before  the 
law — that  the  law  must  not  dictate  to  him  his 
religious  observances.  They  are  matters  be- 
tween him  and  God. 

But,  all  the  same,  the  State  may  and  must  see 
that  the  humblest  child  of  the  humblest  citizen 
shall  have  sufficient  and  real  training  in  morals. 
Obedience  to  law  is  the  very  beginning  in  a  re- 
public, and  the  State  must  see  to  it  that  the  child 
grows  up  in  homage  to  right  and  in  hatred  to 
wrong.  Right  and  wrong,  justice  and  injustice 
are  not  to  be  shoved  off  into  a  bin  with  cinders 
and  ashes.  They  are  not  to  be  reserved  for 
"optional,"  or  "elective,"  or  "voluntary"  classes. 
Duty  is  to  be  the  centre  of  public  education. 

It  would  be  quite  possible  to  arrange  in  any 
town  that  the  supervisors  of  public  education 
and  the  superintendents  of  the  Sunday-schools  or 
Sabbath  schools  should  meet  regularly  once  a 
month  and  determine  mutually  on  arrangements 
by  which  each  system  should  help  the  other. 
"Our  first  class  in  the  High  School  will  have  the 
history  of  America  in  the  next  three  months." 
"Is  it  so  ?  We  will  have  a  class  of  all  your  High 
School  pupils  who  are  in  our  Sabbath  school, 
and  we  will  appoint  the  most  competent  man  in 
[221] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE 


our  church  to  follow  the  history  of  the  country 
with  that  class,  in  special  reference  to  the  place 
which  religious  observance  and  the  will  of  God 
have  had  in  that  history." 

Or  it  may  be  that  the  school  supervisors  say: 
"Our  natural  history  class  teaches  botany  this 
month."  And  the  superintendent  says:  "I  will 
have  every  Sunday  at  church  a  teacher  who  shall 
make  the  study  alive  with  its  suggestion  and  in- 
struction as  to  the  life  of  God  and  work  in  His 
harvest  fields." 

And  so  of  half  the  studies  of  the  schoolroom. 
Every  week-day  study,  indeed — except  the  hum- 
blest mechanism  of  the  multiplication  table  or  of 
the  spelling  book — may  be  made  alive  by  the 
suggestions  which  the  Sunday-school  teacher  can 
give,  and  which  the  Sunday-school  journals  may 
and  ought  to  be  giving,  side  by  side  with  what  is 
called  the  public  system. 

No  men  and  women  in  the  country  ask  for 
this  co-operation  between  the  divine  realities  and 
the  human  necessities  as  largely  as  the  best  pro- 
fessional teachers. 

It  is  quite  time  that  the  terror  of  friction  or 
difficulty  between  them  and  the  organized  insti- 
tutions of  religion  should  be  utterly  swept  away. 


[  222  ] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


THE  CHICAGO  CONVENTION. 

MINISTERS  and  directors  of  Sunday- 
schools  should  understand  that  appli- 
cation for  seats  in  the  convention  at 
Chicago  must  be  made  in  advance. 
It  is  certain  that  the  attendance  will  be  very 
large,  and  it  must  be  limited  to  persons  who  are 
practically  interested  in  the  subject.      A  letter 
from  any  clergyman  or  any  official  representa- 
tive of  a  Sunday-school,  if  received  early  enough, 
will  secure  admission  to  the  convention.     Such 
a  letter  should  be  written  at  once,  and  addressed 
to  Dr.  C.  W.  Votaw  at  the  University  of  Chi- 
cago. 

To  my  own  mind  the  duty  for  which  the 
Council  of  Seventy  are  attempting  to  preside 
will  be  best  fulfilled  if  something  can  be  done 
to  bring  the  Sunday-school  organizations  into 
closer  connection  with  the  public  school  system. 
This  has  been  attempted  once  and  again  in 
this  country,  and  to  a  larger  extent  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  continent  of  Europe,  by  efforts 
by  which  the  different  religious  organizations 
shall  send  to  the  day  schools,  at  certain  hours, 
officially  appointed  persons  who  may  instruct  the 
children  on  subjects  supposed  to  be  especially 
religious.  I  remember  Mr.  Barrows  gave 

[223] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


some  valuable  accounts  of  the  working  of  this 
system  in  the  State  of  New  York  when  it  was 
provided  for  by  law.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to 
say  that  it  has  never  worked  for  any  long  time  in 
America. 

In  place  of  an  elaborate  system  like  this,  it 
still  seems  possible  to  make  an  advance  on  our 
customs  of  to-day  which  are  not  regulated  by 
any  system. 

i.  Could  not  the  superintendents  or  super- 
visors of  education,  in  any  place  where  there  are 
such  officers,  keep  themselves  in  communication 
with  the  leaders  of  the  Sunday-schools  as  well 
as  with  the  head  masters  of  the  public  schools? 
This  need  not  be  done  by  any  statute,  but  by 
common  consent.  Would  it  not  be  possible  for 
such  public  officers  to  notify  the  chiefs  of  the 
Sunday-schools  in  some  detail  of  what  they  are 
doing?  Suppose  they  said,  "Such  and  such  a 
class  is  to  be  engaged  for  the  next  six  months 
on  the  history  of  the  United  States.  We  can- 
not put  too  much  force  on  it.  We  are  going  to 
do  thus  and  thus.  Can  you  not  appoint  a  com- 
petent person  who  shall  unite  in  one  class  boys 
and  girls  who  will  be  studying  such  a  text-book, 
and  cannot  you  enlarge  that  study  and  prepare 
for  it  by  what  belongs  to  the  history  of  the 
United  States  in  your  special  point  of  view? 
[224] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


We  want  to  teach  that  right  is  right,  and  that  it 
is  better  than  wrong.  We  want  to  show  that 
good  conquers  evil;  we  want  to  show  that  God 
rules  in  this  world,  and  the  devil  does  not.  You 
can  command  the  services  of  some  man  or  some 
woman  who  can  on  Sundays  give  such  sugges- 
tions to  boys  and  girls  as  they  study  the  poor 
little  compressed  text-book  which  we  call  the 
History  of  the  United  States,  so  that  they  shall 
be  interested  in  the  study  of  history  from  its 
larger  side." 

2.  Take  it  from  the  other  point  of  view — 
from  the  view  of  the  Sunday-school.  Would 
not  the  life  and  spirit  of  a  Sunday-school  be 
materially  enlarged  if  the  minister  and  super- 
intendent, knowing  that  in  the  high  school  the 
teachers  had  arranged  for  a  course  in  botany  or 
in  geology,  should  select  some  gentleman  or  lady 
competent  for  the  matter,  who  would  watch 
what  the  high  school  was  doing  and  who  would 
take  the  oversight  of  that  study?  Are  there  not 
distinctly  religious  lessons  which  can  be  gained 
by  the  study  of  vegetation  or  the  crystallization 
of  snow  or  the  flying  of  birds,  or  the  habits  of 
insects  and  fishes  and  beasts,  such  as  would  cre- 
ate a  new  interest  for  every  day  of  the  week  in 
the  boys  and  girls  who  had  been  well  led  on  Sun- 
day in  taking  a  large  view  of  what  the  schools 
[225] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


call  natural  history,  or  "science"  ?  I  have  seen 
the  study  of  botany  so  conducted  in  public  schools 
that  you  would  say  it  would  make  children  hate 
all  subjects  connected  with  the  growth  of  plants 
till  they  died.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  known 
that  study  so  woven  with  the  study  of  almost 
everything  which  is  important  in  time  and  eter- 
nity that  the  young  student  could  not  walk  five 
rods  in  summer  without  new  gratitude  to  the 
Lord  of  life.  In  my  own  notion  of  a  good  Sun- 
day-school there  is  always  involved  the  thought 
of  two  or  three  of  the  most  spirited  and  spiritual 
members  of  the  church  as  engaged  in  giving  such 
suggestions  to  the  boys  and  girls. 

3.  What  has  been  said  of  history  and  of 
natural  science  may  be  said  of  social  order — the 
social  order  of  our  own  time.  The  older  classes 
of  boys  and  girls  in  Sunday-schools  ought  to  be 
taught  something  of  temperance  and  intemper- 
ance, of  crime  and  punishment,  of  poverty  and 
pauperism,  of  the  emigration  and  the  relation  of 
races  to  each  other.  Exactly  the  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  the  older  classes  in  the  public 
schools.  It  is  impossible  to  say  that  such  sub- 
jects belong  more  to  Sunday  or  to  Monday;  they 
belong  to  every  day  in  the  week.  Every  Amer- 
can  citizen,  man  or  woman,  ought  to  know  what 
are  the  fundamental  principles  which  govern 
[226] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


every  official  of  the  town  or  the  national  legisla- 
tion in  such  affairs.  If  this  is  so,  the  superin- 
tendents of  the  Sunday-schools  and  the  superin- 
tendents of  the  public  schools  may  very  well 
come  into  close  accord  in  the  arrangements  which 
are  made,  whether  by  the  school  committee  or 
by  the  directors  of  the  church,  in  harmonizing 
the  work  which  is  done  in  the  Sunday-school  or 
by  the  public  authorities. 

As  things  go,  I  see  and  read  of  many  clubs 
and  conventions  of  Sunday-school  teachers.  I 
see  and  read  of  many  clubs  and  conventions  of 
public  school  teachers.  I  am  yet  to  hear  of  the 
first  meeting  of  ten  persons  or  ten  thousand  per- 
sons who  have  conferred,  as  this  Chicago  con- 
vention is  to  confer,  on  the  harmonizing  of  dif- 
ferent forms  of  work  carried  on  by  all  these 
people. 

I  have  not  yet  read  through  the  proceedings 
of  the  great  teachers'  convention  of  the 
country,  which  was  held  in  the  city  of  Detroit; 
but  I  have  read  enough  to  know  that  not  one 
hundredth  part  of  the  time  spent  in  that  great 
assembly  was  devoted  to  any  consideration  of 
the  moral  education  of  the  children,  nearly 
twenty  million  in  number,  for  whose  benefit  the 
convention  was  held.  Athletics,  drawing,  music, 
Latin,  Greek,  political  economy,  and  everything 
[227] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


else  which  the  cyclopaedia  teaches  about  were  rep- 
resented, but  not  one  per  cent,  of  the  hours  given 
to  the  difference  between  good  men  and  bad  men, 
between  good  boys  and  bad  boys.  This  was  not 
because  the  assembly  was  not  an  assembly  of 
good  men  or  good  women.  If  any  one  of  them 
had  asked  me  to  dinner,  we  should  probably  have 
spent  our  whole  time  on  the  matter  which  was 
thus  left  on  one  side  by  the  managers  of  the  con- 
vention. And  this  leads  me  to  believe  that  the 
Chicago  convention  of  next  month  can  really  do 
something  efficient  in  combining  the  efforts,  more 
than  princely,  which  the  people  of  America 
chose  to  make  for  the  education  of  the  children. 

RIGHT  OR  WRONG. 

THE  convention  of  teachers  at  Chicago 
has   discussed  in  a  very  satisfactory 
way  the  question  of  morals  in  the  pub- 
lic schools.     It  is  not  by  a  mere  coin- 
cidence that  the  important  questions  connected 
together  in  this  discussion  are  at  the  same  time 
under  discussion  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  in 
the  House  of  Commons.     On  the  whole,   we 
have  escaped  in  America,  particularly  in  recent 
years,  the  most  difficult  questions  regarding  the 
relation  of  the  public  schools  with  the  ecclesiasti- 
[228] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


cal  boards.  In  England  they  are  still  in  the 
midst  of  such  discussions.  But  all  the  same,  the 
first  duty  of  the  teacher,  or  of  a  board  of  school 
instructors,  is  to  see  that  the  schools  make  better 
men  and  women,  so  that  every  question  of  moral 
education  is  always  in  order  and  always  will  be 
in  order  till  the  end  of  time. 

The  connection  between  moral  observances 
and  religious  institutions  is  so  close  that  when 
our  constitutions,  whether  of  the  State  or  the 
nation,  distinctly  forbade  any  elevation  of  one 
religious  communion  above  another,  that  prohi- 
bition, of  course,  interests  profoundly  the  pro- 
fessed teachers  of  religion,  and  they  are  nervous 
and  eager  lest  the  supreme  rights  which  religion 
claims  and  ought  to  claim  shall  be  disowned. 

The  best  rule  in  any  community  is  to  leave 
much  in  such  matters  to  the  discretion  of  the 
teacher.  The  local  board  of  education  will  of 
course  instruct  the  teacher,  who  will  profit  by 
their  knowledge  of  the  circumstances.  But 
there  is  no  reason  whatever  why  you  should  trust 
a  teacher  in  every  several  detail  of  education 
and  not  trust  her  in  the  central  matter  from 
which  every  detail  springs,  and  by  which  every 
detail  is  regulated.  If  you  give  an  intelligent 
woman  discretion  as  to  whether  she  shall  read 
one  poem  of  Milton's  or  another,  and  whether 
[229] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


she  shall  read  one  speech  in  Hamlet  or  another, 
you  ought  to  trust  her  so  far  as  to  judge  whether 
she  should  read  aloud  a  psalm  of  David  or  a 
speech  of  Saint  Paul  or  a  parable  by  the  Saviour 
of  man.  If  by  misfortune  the  children  think 
the  teacher  is  a  fool,  the  teacher  will  do  them  no 
good  at  all.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  employ 
a  teacher  who  is  not  a  fool,  you  must  give  a  free 
rein  to  that  teacher  in  carrying  out  her  daily 
work.  If  she  appears  to  be  such  a  fool  as  to 
disobey  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
or  the  law  of  the  State,  all  you  have  to  do  is  to 
dismiss  her  and  engage  some  other  teacher  who 
will  have  at  once  more  discretion  and  more  good 
will.  In  this  matter  I  write  with  some  feeling, 
because  in  Massachusetts  this  is  substantially  the 
rule  we  have  to  adopt.  It  would  be  perfectly 
within  the  power  of  a  young  teacher  of  Hebrew 
education  to  insist  on  making  her  Scripture  read- 
ing in  the  school  exercises  wholly  from  the  Old 
Testament.  She  might  do  this,  or  might  not  do 
it,  according  to  the  wish  of  the  parents  with 
whom  a  good  teacher  is  sure  to  be  intimate.  And 
even  a  Boston  town  meeting  would  find  itself  too 
busy  to  examine  the  question  whether  the  nine- 
tieth Psalm  or  the  fifth  chapter  of  Matthew  was 
a  proper  lesson  to  be  read  at  the  opening  of  the 
school. 

[230] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


DUTY— MEN  WHO  SUCCEED. 

A  NEAR  friend  of  mine  makes  brick,  and 
he  makes  very  good  brick.     His  com- 
pany has  a  reputation.    Like  most  men 
placed  as  he  is  placed,  he  has  lots  of 
young  fellows  who  think  they  would  like  to  be 
in  his  office.     They  would  say  they  should  like 
to  be  "on  his  staff,"  if  they  knew  enough. 

They  see  very  good  fellows,  whom  perhaps 
they  know,  coming  in  and  out — fellows  who  are 
paid  regularly  every  Monday  morning  and  who 
are  able  to  go  sometimes  to  the  theatre  at  night 
— and  so  they  think  they  would  like  to  be  in  the 
Norumbega  Brick  Company. 

That  is  not  its  real  name,  but  it  will  do  for 
now.  I  suppose  my  friend  has  ten  such  young 
fellows  who  come  to  him  to  know  if  he  can  em- 
ploy them.  And  they  all  of  them  have  recom- 
mendations from  the  high  school  or  some  college, 
perhaps,  and  they  can  write  a  good  hand,  and  so 
on  and  so  on. 

Well,  he  is  a  good-natured  fellow,  and  he 
has  a  particular  time  of  day  to  talk  to  them;  and 
when  they  come  round  he  is  civil  and  examines 
the  letters  and  writes  down  the  references,  and 
then,  when  the  man  thinks  the  necessary  exam- 
ination is  over,  my  friend  says  to  him:  "Are 

[231  1 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


you  coming  into  this  office  because  you  want  to 
earn  ten  dollars  a  week,  or  are  you  coming  here 
because  you  want  to  know  how  to  make  the  best 
brick  that  is  made  in  this  world,  and  because  you 
want  this  company  to  succeed?" 

And  he  tells  me  that  he  thinks  he  never  makes 
a  mistake — he  tells  me  that  he  thinks  that  in  the 
mere  look  of  the  boy's  face  he  can  tell  whether 
he  wants  to  help  the  world  forward  by  making 
the  best  brick  in  the  world,  or  whether  he  wants 
a  soft  thing  which  shall  pay  him  ten  dollars  a 
week  in  an  employment  where  he  can  wear  a 
boiled  shirt  and  keep  his  hands  clean. 

Sir  John  Lubbock,  who  is  one  of  the  wisest 
men  in  the  world,  said  in  an  address  he  made  at 
Glasgow  a  few  years  ago  that  the  difference  be- 
tween a  German  clerk  in  an  English  banking 
house  and  an  English  clerk  of  the  same  age  could 
be  easily  described. 

And  then  he  described  it,  making  the  same 
observation  which  my  friend  the  brickmaker  has 
made  on  this  side  the  water.  He  said  that  if  you 
take  a  German  clerk  into  your  banking  house  in 
London,  you  have  a  man  who  is  interested  in  your 
business,  who  follows  it  out  in  its  details,  and 
who  at  the  end  of  a  year  understands  what  the 
banking  house  is  for,  and  what  are  its  relations 
with  all  parts  of  the  world. 

[232] 


SUNDAY  AND  HOME 


He  says,  for  instance,  that  a  German  clerk 
will  know  the  inner  history  of  a  bill  of  exchange, 
what  it  stands  for,  whether  it  is  drawn  against 
butter,  or  drawn  against  lumber,  or  drawn 
against  coal.  He  will  know  where  the  coal  or 
the  butter  or  the  lumber  came  from,  and  where 
it  is  going;  and  he  will  know  why  that  bill  of 
exchange,  which  may  be  a  bill  of  exchange  on 
Morocco  or  Ispahan,  came  into  existence. 

Sir  John  Lubbock  says,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  average  English  clerk  cares  nothing 
about  this  curious  history.  He  says  that  the 
clerk  writes  his  name  in  the  proper  place,  that  he 
puts  on  the  stamp  in  the  proper  place,  that  the 
bill  of  exchange  is  all  right,  but  that  when  the 
young  man  goes  home  that  afternoon  he  goes 
home  to  play  cricket  or  to  take  his  sweetheart 
to  the  theatre,  and  forgets  everything  that  he 
has  been  doing  if  he  can,  and  that  he  does  not 
care  in  the  least  to  prepare  himself  for  his  work 
the  next  day. 

Here  is  the  difference  between  two  sorts  of 
men:  One  is  thinking  simply  of  his  own  pretty 
self— I  by  myself,  I.  What  shall  I  drink?  What 
shall  I  do?  How  shall  I  be  clothed?  and  prac- 
tically he  thinks  of  nothing  else.  The  other 
man  is  thinking  of  the  best  interests  of  the  world 
in  which  he  lives. 

[233] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Shall  the  world  in  1920  have  better  brick 
than  it  has  to-day  ?  Shall  the  people  in  the  Mo- 
hawk Valley  who  make  the  butter  be  better  paid 
for  their  butter,  and  shall  it  go  further  and  fur- 
ther? Shall  the  people  of  this  town,  or  of  this 
county,  or  of  this  city,  be  more  awake  to  the 
privileges  of  American  citizens  than  they  are 
now? 

The  old  theologians  would  have  said  that  the 
first  set  are  looking  toward  hell  and  are  walking 
into  hell  as  hard  as  they  can  go,  and  that  the 
other  set  is  looking  toward  heaven  and  walking 
into  heaven  as  fast  as  they  can  go. 

We  are  not  apt  to  use  such  phrases  now,  but 
they  express  sufficiently  well  the  difference  be- 
tween two  sorts  of  men,  and,  I  might  add,  two 
sorts  of  women. 


[234] 


THE   FIVE   GREAT   DUTIES 

OF   THE 

TWENTIETH    CENTURY 


Appendix 


THE  papers  in  this  volume  were  written 
from  day  to  day,  to  scan  the  purpose 
of  each  day. 

They  are  strictly  "ephemeral,"  that 
is,  and  were  meant  to  be. 

They  take  it  for  granted  that  the  reader  is  an 
American  citizen,  living  in  the  great  republic  of 
America,  and  sharing  in  the  duties  and  the 
privileges  of  that  position. 

At  the  same  time,  it  is  true  that  millions  of  peo- 
ple in  this  country  were  born  under  feudal  institu- 
tions wholly  different  from  those  of  America. 
Many  of  them  were  educated  under  those  insti- 
tutions. It  follows  that  some  of  them  do  not 
understand  the  very  language  of  the  United 
States.  They  use  the  words  "government," 
"president,"  "administration,"  without  knowing 
what  these  words  mean  in  America,  to  Ameri- 
cans. 

I  once  heard  the  Rev.  William  Henry  Furness 
say  that  he  had  never  read  any  author  who  was 
educated  under  feudal  institutions  who  under- 
stood what  Jesus  Christ  meant  when  He  spoke 

[237] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


of  the  "Kingdom  of  Heaven."  Such  a  person  can- 
not understand  what  we  Americans  mean  when 
we  speak  of  the  Christian  Commonwealth. 

It  is,  however,  impossible,  of  course,  to  stop 
day  by  day  to  define  terms,  or  to  enlighten  igno- 
rance on  such  fundamental  points,  in  the  restrict- 
ed limits  of  a  "leader."  "Some  things  must  be 
taken  for  granted"  in  such  articles. 

But,  in  collecting  such  papers,  I  wish  to  print 
at  the  same  time  two  addresses,  prepared  for 
different  college  Commencements,  which  do  go 
into  a  definition  of  terms,  and  into  an  explana- 
tion of  the  very  simple  principles  on  which  the 
American  constitutions  are  formed.  I  venture 
to  ask  the  special  attention  to  these  papers  of 
gentlemen  and  ladies  who  write  for  the  press, 
who  have  learned  the  language  of  England,  of 
France,  of  Germany,  of  Russia,  of  Italy,  or  of 
Spain,  before  they  learned  the  political  language 
of  America.  I  print  two  addresses  which  dis- 
cuss fundamentally  several  subjects  which  are 
referred  to  in  the  fifty  "leaders."  One  of 
them  is  on  the  five  great  duties  before  all  the 
world  at  this  time.  Another,  delivered  before 
the  students  of  Smith  Colllege  in  1902,  defines 
the  relations  of  the  educated  citizen  to  his  asso- 
ciates in  the  republic. 

There  are  also  one  or  two  allusions  among 

[238] 


APPENDIX 


these  "leaders"  to  a  comprehensive  plan  of  old- 
age  insurance.  That  properly  cannot  be  dis- 
cussed in  the  short  compass  of  a  daily  leading 
article,  and  with  the  kind  permission  of  Dr. 
Walker  we  print  here  at  length  an  article  by 
myself  on  this  subject  written  for  The  Cosmo- 
politan at  the  same  time  that  the  other  papers 
were  published. 

THE  FIVE  DUTIES.* 

COMMENCEMENT  DAY!    A  perfect 
name.     Better  far  than  any  of  the 
kindred  names.     Better  than  Inaugu- 
ration.   Better  than  Ordination.    Bet- 
ter  than    Commemoration.     Simply,    it   is   the 
commencement  of  life  for  young  men  and  young 
women  whose  self-directed  lives  begin  to-day. 
Let  us  hope,  also,  that  it  is  a  day  of  renewal  of 
life  to  all  their  friends  who  sympathize  in  their 
hopes  and  join  in  their  enthusiasm. 

This  old  century  has  done  good  work  for  man- 
kind in  destroying,  root  and  branch,  the  old  hab- 
its of  any  selfish  forelook  on  such  occasions. 
That  accursed  introspection  demanded  by  the 
old  theologians  is  done  with  forever.  And  all 

*An  address  delivered  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  at  the  Com- 
mencement of  the  University. 

[239] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


the  narrow  individual  inquiry  about  "I"  and 
"me"  and  "mine"  is  forgotten  and  trodden  under 
foot.  For  the  world  really  believes  now  what  the 
fathers  only  pretended  to  believe :  that  every  man 
must  bear  his  brother's  burden;  that  he  who  is 
greatest  among  us  is  a  servant  of  all,  and  that  we 
live  "each  for  all,  and  all  for  each."  There  is 
good  chance  now  for  forelook  in  the  five  hun- 
dred colleges  which,  in  these  pleasant  summer 
Wednesdays,  are  making  prophecies  for  this 
"brave  new  century  which  hath  such  marvels  in 
it."  It  will  be  hard  if  he  who  collects  them  all 
and  reads  them  all  do  not  come  out  upon  some 
notion  of  a  social  order  more  vigorous  than  the 
world  has  tried,  and  with  hopes  for  new  advance 
which  are  real  and  not  shadowy. 

It  is  true  enough,  if  you  choose  to  say  so,  that 
the  visions  of  old  Commencement  Days  have 
often  been  vague  and  transitory,  as  a  camera 
picture  thrown  upon  a  cloud.  But  in  this  year 
and  in  these  years  before  us,  we  have  a  right  to 
expect  marching  directions  more  positive,  be- 
cause the  world  knows  what  it  wants  better  than 
ever.  We  have  a  right  to  expect  triumphs  more 
marvellous  than  ever,  because  he  who  leads  and 
those  who  are  led  have  now  such  gigantic  forces 
at  command. 

I  say  "gigantic  forces,"  forces  of  giants.  I 
[240] 


APPENDIX 


am  assured  on  high  authority  that  the  men  in 
an  American  city  to-day  control  a  thousand  times 
as  much  power  as  their  grandfathers  or  their 
great-grandfathers  controlled  in  the  year  1801. 
For  one  instance,  the  great  engineer,  Mr.  George 
Morison,  told  me  not  long  ago  that  a  single  first- 
class  steamship  in  her  six  days'  voyage  from  the 
city  of  New  York  to  the  city  of  Liverpool  creates 
and  uses  more  force  than  the  Pharaoh  Cheops 
had  at  his  command  for  building  the  great  pyra- 
mid. On  the  average,  each  of  these  men  is  prac- 
tically a  thousand  times  as  strong  as  he  would 
have  been  a  hundred  years  ago.  In  the  year 
1 800  there  were  five  steam  engines  in  the  United 
States.  To-day  there  are  hundreds  within  five 
miles  of  me  as  I  speak,  each  of  which  creates 
more  power  than  did  all  those  five. 

On  higher  authority  yet — on  the  highest  au- 
thority— I  can  say  that  these  legions  of  giants 
will  be  swayed  by  the  moral  forces.  The  victo- 
ries of  the  twentieth  century  are  to  be  moral  vic- 
tories. The  nineteenth  century  has  taught  men 
what  they  mean  when  they  say  "God  is,"  "God 
is  here,"  "God  is  now."  Men  know  what  they 
mean  when  they  say:  "The  kingdom  of  God  is 
at  hand."  Philosophy,  poetry  and  science  have 
vied  with  each  other  in  proclaiming  the  imma- 
nent presence  of  God:  that  God  is  on  our  side; 

[241] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


that  He  works  with  us,  and  we  with  Him.  We 
share  His  omnipotence  when  we  choose,  as  we 
share  His  eternity.  For  man  knows  now  (what 
he  said  he  knew  before)  that  he  is  a  child  of 
God,  who  can  enter  into  His  harvest-field  and 
can  work  with  Him.  When  half  the  people  of 
the  world  cry  out  in  their  daily  prayer,  "Give  ue 
our  daily  bread,"  God  bids  His  children  answer 
the  prayer.  His  child  ploughs  the  prairie,  and 
God  sends  the  sunshine.  God  melts  the  snow  on 
the  mountains  and  His  child  distributes  it  in  fit 
channels  through  the  arid  plains.  They  work 
together,  and  together  they  lay  the  rails  and 
build  the  engine.  Together  they  lay  the  keel  of 
the  steamship ;  together  they  drive  her  across  the 
seas.  Humbly  and  proudly  the  child  repeats  his 
elder  brother's  word:  "My  Father  worketh  and 
I  work."  And  as  some  poor  old  widow  in  the 
Grampians  thanks  God  to-night  for  the  bread 
which  a  farmer's  boy  in  Dakota  has  sent  to  her, 
the  Infinite  Father  of  the  widow  and  boy  is  well 
pleased.  Faith,  Hope,  and  Love — the  three  in- 
finite attributes  which  man,  the  child,  inherits 
from  God  the  Father — these  have  wrought  the 
victory  of  omnipotence.  The  promises  of  in- 
finite love  are  fulfilled. 


Now,  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it? 
[242] 


APPENDIX 


That  is  the  question  of  Commencement  Day.  I 
have  a  right  to  say,  it  is  the  only  question. 

All  these  young  men  and  women,  with  diplo- 
mas which  say  that  they  have  attained  here  in 
Columbus  the  best  education  their  country  knows 
how  to  give !  They  know  they  are  children  of 
God  as  well.  They  can  be  partakers,  if  they 
will,  of  the  divine  nature.  They  sway  the  moral 
forces.  They  can  borrow  omnipotence,  because 
they  are  God's  children.  What  shall  they  do? 

I  believe  there  are  five  central  visible  duties 
before  the  century. 

How  I  wish  that  the  men  and  women  I  ad- 
dress would  select  from  the  five — yes,  before 
this  day  is  done — each  of  them,  the  special  duty 
of  these  threescore  years  opening  before  them 
all! 

Of  the  five  hundred  colleges  of  America,  how 
I  wish  that  each  young  American  who  graduates 
this  year  would  make  the  like  grand  decision ! 

How  good  a  thing  it  would  be  if  at  Harvard, 
at  Yale,  at  Columbia,  and  Princeton  in  the  East ; 
if  here  in  the  centre  of  the  empire,  at  this  univer- 
sity, at  Ann  Arbor,  at  Madison,  at  Minneapolis, 
and  at  St.  Louis;  if  far  on  the  Pacific  slope  at 
the  Pacific  University  in  Salem,  at  Berkeley  Uni- 
versity, at  the  Leland  Stanford  University,  the 
thousands  of  young  men  and  young  women  who 

[243] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


are  to  graduate  this  summer  would  tell  us  this 
year  what  is  their  high  determination;  and  if  at 
the  smaller  colleges,  at  Berea,  at  Oberlin,  at  the 
college  at  Liberty  Four  Corners,  at  the  college 
at  Cranford  Centre,  at  whatever  institution  of 
learning  they  are  permitted  to  send  men  and 
women  forth,  with  the  privilege  publice  praele- 
gendi,  or  publice  profitendi;  if  in  five  hundred 
colleges  of  this  land,  twenty  thousand  young  men 
and  women  all  pledged  themselves  to  one  or 
another  of  the  five  great  duties  now  before  the 
world.  I  could  wish  that  at  each  of  the  five 
hundred  colleges  some  chamberlain,  some  master 
of  ceremonies,  were  ready  with  five  sets  of 
badges  which  should  distinguish  these  decisions. 
If  we  had  here  upon  the  stage  badges  of  white, 
badges  of  blue,  badges  of  gold,  badges  of 
crimson,  badges  of  purple,  the  wearing  of 
which  should  to-morrow  distinguish  those  who 
had  to-day  chosen  each  one  duty  as  a  special 
duty,  from  those  who  had  chosen  another !  Per- 
haps some  gracious  lady  connected  with  the  gov- 
ernment of  Ohio,  connected  with  the  Cabinet  at 
Washington,  perhaps  the  wife  of  a  president, 
or  the  daughter  of  a  governor,  would  herself 
pin  the  badge  upon  the  breast  of  the  young  aspi- 
rant. How  good  a  thing  it  would  be  to-morrow 
if  as  one  went  across  half  a  continent  in  the  train, 

[244] 


APPENDIX 


among  the  thirty  or  forty  young  men  or  young 
women  whom  he  would  see  around  him  at  every 
station  or  in  every  car,  he  could  tell  which  duty 
of  the  five  this  young  man  had  chosen,  which 
duty  this  charming  woman  had  chosen,  that  it 
should  be  their  life  work;  as  Saint  Mark  said  he 
would  carry  the  Gospel  to  Egypt,  as  Saint  An- 
drew said  he  would  carry  the  Gospel  to  Parthia, 
as  Saint  Thomas  said  he  would  carry  the  Gospel 
to  India, — if  we  here  had  given  last  year  to  high 
thought  and  study  as  to  the  want  of  the  twentieth 
century,  and  in  the  ceremony  of  to-day,  in  noble 
rivalry,  we  presented  ourselves  as  belonging  to 
this  legion  or  that  of  God's  great  army. 

"I  am  for  the  engineers,  I  am  for  the  infantry, 
I  am  for  the  artillery,  I  am  for  the  cavalry,  or 
I  am  for  the  pioneers." 

Whether  we  have  a  badge  or  not,  whether 
we  divide  the  ribbons  or  no,  it  is  for  all  of  you 
when  you  "commence"  to  make  the  great  deci- 
sion. 

What,  then,  are  the  five  largest  enterprises 
for  the  century?  I  mean,  what  are  the  visible 
enterprises  in  which  the  whole  world  is  engaged  ? 
What  can  we  do  to  answer  the  Saviour's  prayer 
"That  they  all  may  be  one?" 

I  take  it  for  granted  that  every  one  who  hears 
me  wishes  to  extend  over  the  world  these  glad 

[245] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


tidings:  "I  am  a  child  of  God.  I  am  glad  of  it, 
and  I  mean  that  the  rest  of  the  world  shall  know 
that  they  are  His  children."  If  there  is  anybody 
here  who  is  interested  only  in  himself,  "What 
is  good  for  me?"  "What  can  I  save?"  he  had 
better  take  his  hat  now  and  leave  our  festivities. 
Let  him  pursue  those  studies  of  A  by  himself  A; 
Me  by  myself  Me;  I  by  myself  I,  on  the  loneliest 
desert  which  is  left  between  New  Mexico  and 
Arizona.  He  who  stays  is  here  for  another 
motive:  "All  for  each,  and  each  for  all."  We 
have  prayed  God  this  morning  that  His  kingdom 
may  come;  that  His  will  may  be  done  on  earth  as 
it  is  in  heaven.  And  this  prayer  was  not  a 
matter  of  the  tongue;  it  is  a  matter  of  life.  We 
are  partners  with  him  in  that  business.  Because 
this  is  so,  his  world  must  be  one.  Paul  says  it 
is  of  one  blood.  We  say  it  is  to  be  one  world. 

If  we  are  all  to  be  one,  we  must  know  each 
other;  we  must  be  able  to  put  ourselves,  every 
man  in  the  other  fellow's  place;  we  must  bear 
each  other's  burdens. 

Paraguay  must  not  say  to  Canada,  "I  have 
no  need  of  thee."  Nor  again  must  Cape  Col- 
ony say  to  Sweden,  "I  have  no  need  of  thee." 
The  world's  life  is  to  be  a  common  life.  Races 
and  nations  must  come  to  look  each  other  in  the 
face. 


APPENDIX 


And  we  cannot  say  this  now.  There  are 
brave  exceptions;  but,  all  in  all,  on  the  whole, 
nations  do  not  look  each  other  in  the  face.  It 
would  be  even  fair  to  say  that  great  races  turn 
their  backs  upon  each  other.  I  could  ride  to-day 
in  our  own  country  three  hundred  miles  through 
the  richest  land  in  the  world,  where  I  should  not 
see  twenty  people  all  told  in  ten  hours.  And 
yet  I  return  to  Boston  to  take  the  oversight  there, 
as  a  working  minister,  of  many  a  street  where  a 
thousand  people  are  living  on  one  acre  of  land. 

Although  we  have  made  a  real  advance  in  the 
last  hundred  years,  our  present  system  is  still 
antiquated  and  semi-barbarous.  One  would  like 
to  know  now,  how  Hengist  and  Horsa  took  their 
Saxons  across  from  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  to 
England.  One  would  like  to  know  how  the 
"Mayflower"  was  fitted  for  the  voyage,  and  how 
the  hundred  and  one  passengers  of  eternal 
fame  were  packed  away  in  her  berths  and  state- 
rooms. Every  year  five  hundred  thousand  men, 
women,  and  children  are  brought  across  the 
Atlantic  from  Europe  to  America.  And  one 
asks  why  do  they  cross  the  ocean  to  come  to 
America  ?  Half  Asia  is  vacant,  and  there  is  the 
magnificent  country  unimproved  between  the 
Ural  Mountains  and  the  Pacific.  Why  is  it  that 
Russian  peasants,  to  be  counted  in  tens  of  thou- 

[247] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


sands,  are  working  their  way  westward  to  the 
United  States? 

With  the  well  -  nigh  perfect  opportunities 
which  nature  gives  to  the  work  of  men  on  the 
waters  of  the  Paraguay  and  the  Uruguay  and  the 
La  Plata,  why  is  it  that  no  Abraham  plants  his 
tent  there?  Or,  take  our  own  domain;  why  is 
it  that,  as  I  said,  in  the  southern  wards  of  Boston, 
or  of  New  York,  so  many  people  are  crowded 
together  on  an  acre,  while  within  five  hundred 
miles  of  the  great  Mississippi  you  may  ride  for 
an  hour  without  seeing  the  smoke  of  a  chimney 
or  a  stack  of  hay,  in  the  most  fertile  regions  of 
God's  earth? 

It  is  because  we  have  thus  far  confined  our 
triumphs  in  the  union  of  climates  and  of  nations 
to  a  few  sections  of  the  world,  and  have  left  the 
rest  outside  in  the  cold.  What  Europe  needs, 
cursed  as  she  is  by  the  remnants  of  feudalism, 
is  an  open  passage  for  her  people  to  regions 
where  every  man  shall  hold  his  farm  in  fee-sim- 
ple, and  where  freedom  shall  breed  the  sort  of 
men  and  women  whom  freedom  always  raises. 
And,  therefore,  one  solution  of  our  immediate 
problem  will  come  when  the  crowded  hordes  of 
northern  Chinamen,  who  are  at  this  moment 
starving  because  they  are  crowded,  shall  have 
easy  access  to  those  fertile,  wheat-raising  regions 
[248] 


APPENDIX 


which  are  now  empty  in  Asiatic  Russia.  Those 
regions  are  worthless  now,  as  all  land  is  worth- 
less where  there  are  no  men. 

To  open  this  statement  a  little  more  into  de- 
tail, the  three  great  physical  enterprises  of  the 
next  quarter  century  are  to  be :  One  railway  line, 
at  least,  from  St.  Petersburg  eastward  to  the 
Pacific,  equipped  for  the  cheapest  and  best  travel. 
At  once,  to  speak  of  our  present  facilities,  these 
lines  should  be  of  four  tracks  of  the  heaviest 
metal,  provided  with  convenient  trains  for  the 
transportation  of  men  and  women  who  are 
moving  to  their  new  homes, — of  their  cattle 
and  "stuff,"  as  the  Bible  says. 

With  all  the  facilities  for  commercial  inter- 
change, the  hordes  of  Europe  must  retrace  the 
steps  of  Tamerlane  and  Attila,  and  the  march 
of  empire  must  face  eastward.  The  same  thing 
is  to  be  said  of  the  railway  lines  from  Cairo  to 
the  Cape,  and  probably  from  Tunis  and  Tripoli 
to  the  Cape,  that  the  men  and  women  of  the 
tribes  of  Central  Africa  may  know  what  the  rest 
of  the  world  is  and  what  it  is  doing.  Then 
these  miserable,  bitter  feuds  which  are  disgracing 
England  and  the  world  to-day  in  the  South  Afri- 
can colonies  shall  be  overruled  by  the  larger  civ- 
ilization of  the  united  world.  And  these  two 
are  simple  analogies  or  prototypes  of  what 

[249] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


America  needs,  and  will  have,  in  that  great  line 
of  railway  which  is  to  run  from  Quebec  at  least 
to  the  northern  limit  of  Patagonia.  Probably 
within  the  life  of  those  who  are  now  hearing  me, 
its  engines  will  be  even  farther  south.  They 
will  be  snorting  on  the  bluffs  above  the  straits 
of  Magellan,  and  the  passengers  will  be  looking 
across  those  straits  to  the  land  of  fire. 

These  are  the  three  physical  enterprises  for 
the  world,  for  all  mankind.  Now,  for  our  own 
country,  there  is  the  great  necessity,  which  is 
indeed  the  test  of  whether  we  be  a  Christian 
people  or  no.  Can  the  United  States  so  outlive 
the  bitter  prejudices  of  barbarism  as  to  overrule, 
as  to  overawe,  the  hatred  of  race  against  race? 
Can  the  dominant  white  race  of  the  United 
States  of  America  lift  up  and  renew  and  strength- 
en the  subject  race,  the  vassal  race  of  negroes? 

Can  it  find  out  what  the  diplomatists  call  the 
modus  vivendi  for  the  little  handful  of  the  red 
race,  the  men  whom  it  found  scattered  about, 
all  but  lost  in  these  forests  and  valleys,  when 
we  came  here  ?  And  can  it  interpret  the  Gospel 
of  God  so  as  to  know  how  to  deal  with  those 
millions  upon  millions  of  the  Asiatic  races  who 
look  across  the  Pacific  eastward,  who  came  across 
the  Pacific  eastward  a  thousand  years  ago,  and 
which  have  scratched  the  surface  of  the  inhab- 

[250] 


APPENDIX 


ited  continent?  White  men,  black  men,  red  men 
and  yellow  men — will  the  twentieth  century  know 
how  here  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific 
these  four  races  shall  live  and  move  and  have 
their  being  in  one  nation? 

And  to  begin  with,  how  shall  we  bridge  the 
gulf  of  fire,  how  shall  we  bring  the  superior 
white  race  and  the  black  race,  still  our  inferior, 
into  accord  ?  I  do  not  say  how  shall  their  voices 
rise  in  unison,  but  I  do  say  how  shall  their  lives 
unite  in  harmony? 

This  for  young  America  is  one  of  the  great 
problems.  Does  young  America  ask  how  young 
America  shall  use  its  power?  For  what  end 
shall  it  borrow  from  God  His  omnipotence? 

I  need  not  say  more  of  the  infinite  moral 
power  with  which  you  and  I  are  to  attach  these 
duties.  The  nineteenth  century  has  taught  the 
world  its  lesson :  the  lesson  that  every  man  might 
have  learned  in  the  first  century.  You  and  I 
are  children  of  God,  and  we  know  we  are.  We 
share Hisnature  when  we  choose  His  infinite  pow- 
er, and  we  know  that.  We  can  proclaim  these 
glad  tidings;  the  century  has  taught  us  that.  If 
we  choose  I  And  for  such  omnipotence  as  He 
lends  us  we  have  such  work  at  our  hands — work 
which  may  be  finished  while  men  and  women  live 
to  whom  I  am  speaking.  If  the  young  men  and 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


young  women  choose,  who  enter  upon  life  in  this 
blessed  1901,  those  feuds  of  race  will  be  at  an 
end  which  frighten  godless  men  to-day.  With 
one  mission  and  for  one  great  end — no  less  than 
the  reign  of  God  upon  the  earth — the  strong 
races  and  the  weak  races  of  America  will  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being  as  one. 

Our  Anglo-Saxon  blood  will  assert  itself  in 
the  life  of  a  united  people,  in  its  passion  for 
freedom  and  its  devotion  to  law.  The  Celtic 
and  Latin  races  will  instil  into  the  whole  nation 
their  quickness  of  perception,  their  subtleties  of 
thought,  the  old  Roman  secret  of  victory,  and 
the  old  Greek  love  of  beauty.  The  African 
race,  as  thousands  of  years  have  proved,  has  its 
special  contributions  to  the  harmony  of  the 
whole  in  tenderness,  in  affection,  in  arts  of 
expression  which  the  whole  requires.  And  if 
what  are  left  of  the  red  men  can  teach  the  toil- 
worn  Saxon  that  the  most  elegant  mansion  is 
a  prison  compared  with  the  blue  arch  of  the  tem- 
ple of  God,  why,  he  will  teach  him  something 
which  the  poor  Saxon  sadly  needs  to-day. 

In  such  work,  the  first  steps  are  already  taken 
in  the  schools  at  Manassas,  at  Calhoun,  at  Snow 
Hill,  and  fifty  other  such  places,  and  on  a  larger 
scale  at  your  own  Xenia,  at  Fisk  University, 
at  Atlanta,  at  Tulane,  and,  most  distinguished 
[252] 


APPENDIX 


of  all,  at  Tuskegee  and  at  Hampton.  As  one 
visits  these  schools,  as  one  talks  with  the  prophet 
pioneers  who  carry  them  on,  he  shares  the  pil- 
grim life  of  Bradford  and  Brewster.  He  under- 
stands the  thrill  in  the  veins  of  Martin  and  of 
Judson.  He  goes  into  the  wilderness  as  St. 
Bernard  went  with  the  twelve  apostles  who 
made  modern  Europe.  Had  not  Bernard 
and  his  men  created  Clairvaux,  in  the 
Valley  of  Wormwood,  France  would  not  be 
France  to-day,  nor  England  England,  nor  Amer- 
ica America.  We  should  not  be  here,  but  that 
such  Christian  fanatics  gave  themselves  to  the 
work  of  civilizing  western  Europe. 

It  is  with  such  enthusiasm,  with  such  devotion 
to  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
among  all  the  races  of  America,  that  those  of 
you  will  pledge  yourselves  who  consecrate  your 
lives  to  the  duty,  infinite  in  all  its  relations,  which 
I  have  described. 

Here  are  four  of  the  great  duties  from  which 
young  America  selects,  each  woman  her  own, 
each  man  his  own.  First,  there  are  the  three 
physical  necessities,  which  shall  relieve  the  crowd- 
ed wildernesses,  and  carry  their  people  to  the 
fertile  deserts.  Then,  for  us  young  Americans 
there  is  the  great  enterprise,  moral,  physical  and 
spiritual,  by  which  the  great  American  races  shall 

[253] 


WE,  THE  PEOPLE* 


live  together  in  harmony.  "That  they  may  all 
be  one,  as  thou,  Father,  with  me,  and  I  with  thee, 
that  they  may  all  be  perfected  in  one." 

You  have  anticipated  me  in  the  immediate 
thought,  that  all  this  requires  permanent  peace 
among  the  nations  of  the  world.  This  must  be 
the  great  determination  which  includes  and  is 
necessary  for  the  other  four. 

As  the  forty-five  States  of  America  make  up 
the  United  States,  because  they  submit  their  dif- 
ferences to  one  Supreme  Court,  so  the  fifty-one 
great  nations  of  the  world  must  submit  their  dif- 
ferences to  one  permanent  tribunal.  All  our 
proposals  for  harmony  of  races,  for  international 
emigration,  for  international  commerce,  are  vain 
if  these  fifty-one  nations  are  to  continue  the  fol- 
lies which  have  lasted  for  sixteen  hundred  years, 
since  the  great  peace  of  the  early  Christian  cen- 
turies. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  world  chooses  to  remem- 
ber, as  it  might,  that  from  the  time  of  Trajan 
for  two  hundred  years  all  the  world  of  which 
we  know  anything  was  at  peace.  "No  war  nor 
battle  sound  was  heard  the  world  around."  I 
do  not  think  the  world  chooses  to  remember  that 
to  that  period  of  peace,  in  what  men  call  the 
Roman  Empire,  we  owe  the  civilization  of  to- 
day. I  should  not  have  this  coat  on  my  back, 

[254] 


APPENDIX 


I  should  not  have  this  linen  that  is  in  my  shirt, 
we  should  not  have  this  bread  which  is  upon  our 
tables,  but  for  the  protracted  peace  of  these 
reigns  of  Aurelius  and  the  Antonines.  It  was 
then  that  the  flax  of  Italy  worked  its  way  into 
the  desert  wastes  of  Britain,  of  Sweden,  and  of 
Gaul.  It  was  then  that  the  peach-trees  of  Persia 
seeded  themselves  in  the  gardens  around  Paris. 
It  was  then  that  the  barbarian  Celts  and  Teutons 
and  Iberians  heard  the  voice  of  the  Gospel. 

It  was  then  that  civilization,  as  we  call  civili- 
zation, was  born.  What  those  two  centuries  of 
peace  then  wrought  for  Europe,  Asia,  and  north- 
ern Africa,  this  victory — multiplied  a  thousand- 
fold— is  to  be  the  victory  of  the  age  of  peace  if 
the  twentieth  century  chooses  to  take  for  itself 
that  honor. 

And  so  it  is  that  the  enterprise  of  enterprises 
which  sums  up  all  the  other  four  is  the  duty  and 
privilege  before  the  young  man  and  young 
woman  of  the  world  to-day,  of  bringing  in  the 
reign  of  peace  among  the  nations.  The  armor 
of  chivalry,  whether  offensive  or  defensive,  has 
been  sent  back  to  the  museums  and  the  stage  of 
the  opera;  and  the  armor  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
whether  offensive  or  defensive,  is  also  only  mat- 
ter of  curious  study  of  the  past.  Even  the  naval 
armor,  whether  offensive  or  defensive,  of  our 

[255] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Civil  War,  is  now  matter  of  yesterday — studied 
only  as  a  curiosity  by  your  admirals  and  mid- 
shipmen. Just  so  in  the  new  century  must  all 
this  military  machinery  be  laid  by  as  a  matter 
of  past  history.  They  say  the  people  of  Mars 
have  been  able  to  open  magnificent  watercourses 
which  unite  their  Arctic  with  their  Antarctic 
zones  for  the  irrigation  of  their  torrid  deserts. 
They  do  this  simply  because  in  Mars  they  do  not 
know  what  war  is.  There  nation  does  not  draw 
sword  against  nation.  And  so  our  civil  engi- 
neers of  to-day  assure  us  that  the  burden  with 
which  Europe  alone  oppressed  herself  in  the  last 
year  for  ships  and  cannon  and  powder  and  shot 
and  soldiers  makes  a  treasure  which  will  build 
the  great  railway  lines  of  Europe,  Africa,  and 
America ;  it  will  complete  them  and  equip  them, 
and  it  will  do  the  same  thing  again  if  it  were 
necessary.  The  demand  for  bloodshed  of  one 
single  year  is  more  than  enough  to  fulfil  all  the 
greatest  requests  of  peace  for  a  century. 

There  is  no  place  in  America  where  one  says 
this  with  the  pleasurable  feeling  with  which  I 
speak  now,  standing  where  I  stand.  It  is  im- 
possible not  to  remember  here  who  was  the  first 
Christian  man  who  ever  stood  on  American  soil. 
When  we  speak  of  the  Gospel  of  Glad  Tidings, 
the  Gospel  of  Peace,  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ, 
[256] 


APPENDIX 


planted  as  a  seed  from  the  Garden  of  Paradise, 
from  which  was  to  spring  the  tree  which  should 
overshadow  this  western  continent,  one  remem- 
bers that  October  morning  when  the  "Santa 
Maria — Saint  Mary,  "the  Mother  of  Christ" — 
came  to  anchor  and  lowered  a  boat.  With  the 
first  rays  of  the  sun  the  stout  oarsmen  pulled  her 
to  the  beach.  From  the  bow  there  sprang  to 
the  new-blessed,  happy  land,  Christopher,  he 
who  bears  Christ,  he  who  bears  the  Gospel. 
And  standing  here,  one  remembers  that  his  other 
name  was  Columbus. 

For  me  this  memory  is  all  twined  in  with 
another  memory.  I  remember  that  three  years 
ago,  when  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  the  command- 
er of  the  largest  armies  in  the  world,  proposed 
permanent  peace  to  the  nations  of  the  world,  it 
was  the  city  of  Columbus,  fitly  named,  which 
first  publicly  welcomed  that  dove  of  peace  and 
recognized  its  message.  One  day  in  August, 
1898,  the  minister  of  the  First  Congregational 
Church  of  Columbus  read  from  his  pulpit  the 
peace  manifesto  of  the  Czar  of  Russia.  At  his 
motion,  the  First  Congregational  Church  of 
Columbus  sent  to  Emperor  Nicholas  its  approval 
of  his  design,  its  sympathy  with  his  motive,  and 
promised  co-operation  in  his  effort.  There  is 
no  nobler  or  finer  incident  in  history.  A  Con- 

[257] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


gregational  church  is  the  best  visible  type  of  the 
purest  democracy.  And  here  it  joins  hands  with 
him  who  is  the  accepted  type  of  autocratic  rule. 
It  is  said,  I  believe  truly,  that  this  expression  of 
democratic  sympathy  was  the  first  official 
response  which  the  Emperor  received  to  his  pro- 
posal. You  know  that  the  church  received  at 
once  from  him  the  expression  of  his  cordial  grat- 
ification. 

I  know  that  this  city  had  earned  its  honorable 
place  on  the  page  already  as  the  capital  of  the 
Empire  State.  But  I  am  so  far  a  prophet  that 
I  venture  to  say  that  the  poets  and  prophets  of 
the  future  will  name  that  August  day  as  the  cen- 
tral day  in  your  celebrations.  It  is  the  day  in 
which  this  city,  true  to  democracy,  looking  far 
into  the  future,  reading  well  the  past,  confirms 
its  right  to  its  great  name.  He  who  bears  Christ 
in  His  arms,  He  who  proclaims  the  gospel  of 
glad  tidings,  He  gives  you  His  name.  And  for 
a  motto  this : 

"PEACE  ON  EARTH,  GOOD  WILL 
AMONG  MEN." 


[258] 


APPENDIX 


THE  EDUCATED  CITIZEN.* 

IT  is  Commencement  Day.  Well  named! 
For  you  really  begin  on  life  the  day  of 
Commencement. 

Do  you  remember  the  fine  cartoon  in 
Punch,  where  Bismarck,  the  pilot,  passes  down 
the  ship's  gangway  to  the  sea,  and  the  young 
Emperor,  who  is  to  take  command,  waves  his 
hand  of  good-by  to  him? 

You  shake  hands  to-day  with  your  Bismarcks 
here,  and  you  take  command,  each  woman  of 
her  own  vessel, — not  even  a  frigate  yet,  nor  a 
launch,  far  less  a  ship  of  the  line, — only  a  canoe, 
perhaps. 

But  "it  is  your  own,"  as  Touchstone  says  in 
the  play. 

You  have  passed  your  last  examination.  You 
have  written  your  last  thesis.  Yes,  young 
women,  and  the  vacation  which  begins  this  after- 
noon is  your  last  vacation.  Once  on  the  ocean 
of  life  there  are  no  more  vacations  for  conscien- 
tious men  and  women. 

Up  to  this  time  there  has  been  the  contrast 
between  what  Oxford  calls  "Town  and  Gown." 

*An  address  delivered  at  Smith  College,  Northampton, 
Mass. 

[259] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


"There's  some  of  them  college  girls."  That 
has  been  your  title,  as  you  pass  a  group  of  news- 
boys or  bootblacks  in  the  street.  And  you  know 
better  than  I  do,  what  are  the  select  phrases  by 
which  Smith  College  designates  the  denizens  of 
the  town.  Let  one  hope  that  you  do  not  speak 
of  the  people  as  cavalierly  as  Shakspere  does, 
as  if  they  were  the  dregs  of  the  town  described 
by  Sallust. 

In  an  old  novel,  forgotten  before  any  of  you 
were  born,  five  seniors  are  talking  together  the 
day  before  Commencement,  and  Horace  says  to 
the  other  four: 

"We  have  had  the  best  education  our  country  can  afford, 
and  at  the  end  of  our  four  years  we  are  smoking  and 
laughing,  with  no  more  idea  what  we  can  do  with  the 
best  education  our  country  can  afford  than  we  had  the 
first  day  we  saw  each  other." 

I  am,  naturally,  the  only  person  living  who 
remembers  these  words,  and  that  is  because  I 
wrote  them.  Now,  I  am  fancying  that  some  of 
you  are  in  the  condition  of  Horace  of  my  story. 
From  the  fortunate  position  of  a  graduate  of 
sixty-three  years'  standing  I  have  the  advantage 
that  I  look  now  upon  the  other  side  of  the  canvas. 
I  am  not  going  to  give  advice  to  any  one.  But 
I  can  bring  together  some  observations  which 
I  have  made  in  these  two  generations  which  you 
[260] 


APPENDIX 


ought  to  bear  in  mind,  as  you  answer  Horace's 
question. 

What  is  the  place  in  American  life  which 
those  men  and  women  ought  to  take  who  have 
had  the  best  training  America  can  give,  as  you 
have?  Let  me  say  in  passing,  that  I  hope  you 
are  all  to  live  in  America.  Indeed,  if  there  are 
any  who  do  not,  my  word  is  not  for  them.  They 
may  leave  the  hall  now,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned. 
I  once  asked  a  Middletown  boy,  in  the  Wesley- 
an  University,  what  became  of  the  student  who 
was  not  in  a  Greek  letter  society.  "Oh,  God 
be  with  him !"  was  his  prompt  reply. 

Reverently  and  gladly  we  will  make  the  same 
prayer  for  those  who  are  forced  to  live  in  any 
feudal  nation.  We  who  are  more  fortunate  will 
consider  what  are  the  daily  duties  of  well-educa- 
ted men  and  women  in  America. 

Do  not  make  the  mistake,  then,  which  almost 
all  foreigners  make  of  supposing  that  you  work 
in  a  nation  of  feudal  classes.  Dr.  McCosh  once 
came  over  to  our  Exeter,  to  our  old  academy 
there,  and  told  those  open-mouthed  and  wonder- 
ing Yankee  boys  that  the  educated  men  of  Amer- 
ica are  to  be  the  "Aristocracy  of  America,"  a 
kind  of  House  of  Lords  without  coronets. 
Absolutely  ignorant  of  America  and  what  her 
"classes" — classes! — are.  Every  now  and  then 
[261] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


we  see  the  same  nonsense  in  a  newspaper,  always 
written  by  some  imported  pen,  whose  poor  prat- 
tling has  escaped  the  midnight  blue  pencil  of  the 
better  informed  night  editor  in  charge.  Such 
prattle  only  echoes  the  notion  of  all  the  Euro- 
pean writers,  who  suppose  that  the  great  major- 
ity of  people  work  only  as  oxen  work,  with  their 
dead  muscle  and  weight,  and  that  only  a  little 
superior  handful — well,  "you  know,  like  you  and 
me,  you  know" — only  we  who  bring  mind  or 
spirit  to  the  control  of  matter.  This  notion,  in 
America,  is  all  wrong. 

Let  me  say  in  passing  that  if  we  used  the  two 
words  "labor"  and  "work"  carefully,  as  the 
Bible  uses  them,  we  should  greatly  clear  away 
all  this  nonsense.  In  good  English  "labor" 
always  means  what  its  Latin  root  means — that 
which  wears  away,  that  which  fatigues.  On  the 
other  hand,  "work"  means  what  its  root  means — 
the  sway  of  spirit  over  dead  matter.  Only  man 
and  beast  and  things  labor.  God  works.  It 
would  be  irreverent  to  speak  of  God  as  a  "labor- 
er." It  was  only  by  a  carelessness  in  translation 
that  men  were  once  spoken  of  as  "fellow  laborers 
with  God."  In  the  revised  version  of  the  New 
Testament  we  are  "fellow  workmen,"  as  we 
should  have  been  always. 

"How  is  the  engine  going,  Mr.  Engineer?" 
[262] 


APPENDIX 


"She  labors  badly,  sir,"  or  "She  works  well." 
At  death  "men  cease  from  their  labors,  and 
their  works  do  follow  them." 

To  use  these  accurate  and  convenient  defini- 
tions, the  unskilled  people,  the  drudges,  the 
"laborers,"  the  groundlings  of  Shakspere's  wit, 
make  only  a  little  more  than  three  per  cent  of 
our  population — less  than  eleven  per  cent  of  the 
active  force  of  working  America.  Count  in  all 
the  unintelligent  hands  on  farms  in  New  York 
and  New  England ;  count  in  street  laborers,  steve- 
dores, sewer  and  gas  pipe  diggers ;  count  in  wash- 
erwomen and  floor  scrubbers,  and  you  have  not 
eleven  per  cent  of  the  human  forces.  The  other 
eighty-nine  per  cent  are  not  drudges,  they  are 
not  people  who  hire  out  their  muscle.  They  are 
work  men  and  work  women.  They  use  their 
minds.  They  use  mind  and  soul  to  control 
matter.  And  when  you  hear  some  demagogue, 
ranting  before  an  audience  more  intelligent  than 
he  is,  say  that  he  also  is  a  "laboring  man" — that 
he  labors  in  his  office  for  their  good — you  know 
that  he  does  not  know  the  language  he  is  using. 
"Two  men  I  honor,"  says  Carlyle,  in  a  famous 
passage,  "and  no  third.  First,  the  toil-worn 
craftsman."  Yes,  it  is  the  craftsman  who  leads 
modern  life, — the  man  who  applies  mind  to 
handle  matter.  And  the  craftsman  is  an  "edu- 
[263] 


,  THE  PEOPLE* 


cated  man"  as  much  as  you  are.  He  is  a  child 
of  God,  as  you  are;  at  work  with  God,  as  you 
are;  using  the  godly  powers,  as  you  do. 

Remember,  as  you  go  about  your  life  work 
after  Commencement  Day,  that  eighty-nine  per 
cent  of  the  men  and  women  with  whom  you 
have  to  work  are  in  this  way  your  fellows,  your 
mates,  your  comrades.  You  are  all  in  one  com- 
mon enterprise — creating,  as  God  creates,  sub- 
duing the  world,  as  God  sent  you  to  subdue  it, 
each  in  his  own  place,  "a  fellow-workman  with 
Him." 

The  first  lesson  of  life,  of  course,  one  which 
need  not  be  dwelt  upon  here  and  now,  is  that 
every  one  shall  live  in  the  open  air  all  he  can. 
Next  to  this  and  above  all  other  rules  is  this 
great  necessity  of  which  I  have  been  speaking 
that  you  keep  up  your  comradeship  with  the 
other  workmen;  all  for  each,  and  each  for  all. 

Apart  from  the  moral  and  spiritual  quickening 
which  a  man  gains  from  this  intercourse  with 
such  mankind,  and  which  he  cannot  gain  with- 
out it,  the  experience  of  the  race  proves  that 
there  are  experiments  which  can  only  be  tried 
by  all  the  people,  and  results  which  the  people 
only  can  attain.  As  dear  Garfield,  the  good 
President,  said,  "All  the  people  know  more  than 
any  one  of  the  people."  This  is  due  to  what 

[264] 


APPENDIX 


the  philosophers  call  the  law  of  selection.  A 
colony  of  the  people  land  on  Plymouth  Rock. 
Year  by  year  their  legislatures  meet.  They  try 
their  experiments.  Each  man  who  has  a  plan 
proposes  it — urges  it.  If  it  seems  sensible,  it 
is  tried.  How  if  it  fails?  Why!  it  fails  and  is 
forgotten.  If  it  succeeds — ah,  then !  you  count 
one  on  the  great  tally  sheet.  That  little  State 
gains  one  step,  and,  in  the  end,  the  world  gains  a 
step  by  the  great  experiment.  Because  you  gave 
each  man  a  chance  to  say  what  was  in  him,  you 
made  this  step.  Because  you  highly  resolved 
that  you  would  have  no  inglorious  Miltons  nor 
village  Hampdens. 

Wrong  fails  because  it  is  wrong.  The  wrongs, 
the  untruths,  are  inconsistent  with  each  other. 
They  clash  against  each  other  and  confute  each 
other.  They  neutralize  each  other  and  are  lost. 
Only  the  truths  are  consistent;  they  arrange 
themselves  in  one  system,  and  under  that  system 
the  State  moves  forward  as  God  would  have  it. 
Thus  it  is,  that  if  you  give  time  enough,  and 
a  fair  opportunity  to  each  and  all,  in  the  long 
run  you  have  a  right  to  say  with  reverence,  and 
with  the  confidence  bred  of  reverence,  that  "The 
voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God !" 

This  means  that  there  is  no  success  for  any 
one  if  he  try  to  live  for  himself  and  by  himself. 

[265] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


He  must  live  in  the  common  life,  or  he  dies. 
He  must  enjoy  with  the  joy  of  others;  he  must 
sorrow  in  their  sorrows.  If  he  is  a  student,  he 
must,  so  far  as  he  can,  study  with  them;  and 
what  he  has  acquired,  he  must,  so  far  as  he  can, 
teach  them.  In  all  true  literature  and  science, 
there  are  no  secret  medicines  or  private  paths. 
Everything  is  really  patent.  Noblesse  oblige, 
and  what  a  man  discovers,  he  ^-covers.  He 
opens  it  for  the  universal  good.  All  this  was 
perfectly  stated  by  St.  Paul  when  he  declared 
that  we  must  bear  each  other's  burdens,  and, 
in  that  noble  illustration  of  which  he  is  so  fond, 
declared  with  very  passionate  exclamation  that 
while  we  are  many  members,  we  are  but  one 
body. 

The  class  of  scholars,  or  "clerks,"  as  feudal- 
ism called  them,  has  the  knack — it  is  nothing 
more — of  putting  things.  But  unless  men  can 
observe,  unless  they  can  wring  from  Nature  her 
secrets,  unless  they  have  something  to  tell, — how 
useless  are  their  nominatives  and  their  predicates, 
their  subjunctives  and  optatives.  Do  not  say 
anything  unless  you  have  something  to  say. 
That  is  the  great  rule.  And  the  gift  and  genius 
of  America  have  been  and  are,  that  she  shall  so 
scatter  the  priceless  gifts  of  such  institutions  as 
this,  that  all  men  shall  be  observers;  and  on  the 
[266] 


APPENDIX 


other  hand,  that  all  the  observers  can  express 
themselves.  When  the  clerks  and  the  other 
workmen  do  not  join  in  hand,  nothing  goes  well. 
Of  course  you  will  be  engaged  in  education. 
You  may  be  principal  of  a  college  or  not.  In 
either  case  you  are  educating  the  young  men  and 
women  of  America.  If  one  of  the  graduates 
of  Amherst  yonder  is  running  a  railway  line 
through  a  village  of  North  Dakota,  he  is  edu- 
cating the  boys  and  girls  who  run  after  him,  to 
wonder  at  his  theodolite,  to  thank  him  for  his 
courtesy  and  to  question  as  to  his  purpose.  If 
you  are  underdraining  a  piece  of  tillage  land  in 
the  Aroostook  Valley,  you  are  educating  every 
half-breed,  or  Canadian,  or  Italian  who  lays  the 
pipe  or  watches  the  flow  of  the  water.  For 
aught  I  know  one  of  you  is  going  to  be  married 
to-morrow  morning  and  is  going  up  to  the  newly 
built  log  cabin  there  to  establish  her  new  home. 
From  the  wedding  present  which  your  uncle 
Horace  gave  you  you  have  picked  out  ten  good 
dollars,  which  you  have  spent  for  seeds,  bulbs, 
and  a  little  hoe  of  your  own  and  a  rake  of  your 
own.  As  you  carry  on  your  pretty  garden  on 
the  south  side  of  the  house,  you  are  educating 
everybody  within  ten  miles  of  you,  and  this  means 
that  you  are  educating  the  rulers  of  this  land. 
According  as  you  welcome  them  at  the  door, 

[267] 


,   THE  PEOPLE" 


according  as  you  speak  with  them  at  the  pro- 
vision shop,  you  are  forming  the  public  opinion 
of  this  land.  That  is,  you  are  educating  the 
rulers  of  this  land.  You  are  forming  the  public 
opinion  before  which  all  mere  officers  of  admin- 
istration bow.  For  these  men  are  not  to  be 
drudges  always.  Their  children  are  not  to  be 
drudges  or  helots  or  slaves  to  toil.  Higher  and 
higher,  larger  and  broader,  are  to  be  their  lives. 
It  is  you  who  are  to  lift  them.  You  are  to  en- 
large them.  You  are  training  the  American 
people. 

And  the  American  people  is  the  sovereign  of 
America. 

There  shall  be  no  upper  class  in  education, 
and  no  lower.  God  and  His  world  are  for  every- 
body. John  Adams  said  that  every  one  in  his 
State  shall  have  a  liberal  education.  What  he 
said  of  his  State  shall  be  true  of  the  nation.  It 
shall  be  true  of  everybody. 

How  shall  we  train  our  Prince?    To  love  his  land, 
Love  justice  and  love  honor.     For  them  both 
He  girds  himself  and  serves  her,  nothing  loath, 
Although  against  a  host  in  arms  he  stand. 
Ruling  himself,  the  world  he  may  command. 
Trained  to  serve  her  in  honor  and  in  truth, 
Baby  and  boy  and  in  his  lusty  youth 
He  finds  archangels'  strength  on  either  hand. 

[268] 


APPENDIX 


The  best  the  land  can  teach  him,  he  shall  know; 
The  best  the  land  can  teach  him,  he  shall  see; 
Trace  all  the  footsteps  where  his  fathers  trod, 
See  all  of  beauty  that  the  world  can  show, 
And  how  it  is  that  Freedom  makes  men  free, 
And  how  such  Freemen  come  to  love  their  God. 

Wherever  the  people  are,  the  scholar  must  be 
also,  if  he  is  to  carry  on  this  work.  D'Artagnan 
and  Aramis  and  Quentin  Durward  had  to  go 
to  Paris,  to  the  capital,  to  seek  their  sovereigns, 
if  they  would  serve  the  State.  But,  with  us, 
the  sovereign  is  working  in  the  mines  of  Lake 
Superior.  The  sovereign  is  herding  cattle  in 
Colorado,  he  is  feeding  the  world  from  the  wheat 
plains  of  Dakota.  The  empire  of  this  country 
is  not  in  the  hands  of  the  large  cities,  though  the 
writers  in  the  large  cities  try  to  think  so  and  to 
make  you  think  so.  It  is  in  the  hands  of  those  large 
country  towns,  where  the  best  men  lead  the  town 
and  direct  its  education,  its  local  government, 
and  give  tone  and  courage  to  its  people — towns 
without  rings,  towns  not  governed  by  bar-rooms. 
It  is  the  men  from  these  towns  who  are  pushed 
forward  into  important  public  life,  and  loyally 
sustained  by  the  American  people.  Emigrants 
from  Europe,  still  blinded  by  European  preju- 
dices, settle  in  clans  in  our  large  cities,  and  are 
led  blindly  by  other  men.  But  the  American 
people  is  still  true  to  that  enthusiasm  for  local 

[269] 


. 

"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


government  which  so  surprised  De  Tocqueville, 
and  which,  to  this  hour,  not  one  foreign  writer 
in  ten  understands.  Find  for  me  the  States  or 
parts  of  States  which,  on  the  whole,  direct  the 
American  policy  in  her  public  affairs,  and  you 
find  the  States  or  parts  of  States  which  are  under 
the  empire,  not  of  the  few  large  cities  of  Amer- 
ica, but  of  her  numerous  smaller  cities  and  towns. 
Literally,  it  does  not  matter,  for  the  sway  that 
you  are  to  have  over  the  next  half  century, 
whether  you  go  to  the  wilderness  of  Lake  Su- 
perior or  to  the  most  crowded  ward  in  New 
York.  A  leader  is  a  leader.  If  you  have  in  you 
the  stuff  of  which  leaders  are  made,  you  will  lead. 
That  is,  if  you  rely  on  the  Idea;  if  you  make 
yourself  an  ally  of  the  Almighty,  speak  His  word 
and  do  His  deed,  you  will,  of  course,  take  place 
and  authority  among  men. 

So  much  for  the  question,  Where? 

As  to  the  question,  When  you  shall  take  this 
direction,  there  is  never  but  one  answer — Now. 
To-day.  Now  is  the  accepted  time.  I  trust 
that  your  four  years  at  college  are  not  to  be 
flung  away  like  an  old  garment.  I  think  you 
have  just  whetted  your  appetite  in  literature,  in 
art,  in  science,  in  philosophy.  As  Paul  Jones 
said,  you  are  just  ready  to  begin.  You  are  not 
to  stay  here  longer.  No.  But  you  are  to  go 

[  270  ] 


APPENDIX 


on  in  just  those  studies  which  please  you  most, 
with  the  freedom  of  womanhood  joined  to  the 
training  of  youth,  and  to  carry  them  on,  in  one 
direction  or  another,  until  you  die.  You  are, 
I  trust,  enthusiastic  about  Alma  Mater.  I  hope 
you  are  always  going  to  say  that  Smith  College 
is  the  best  college  in  the  world.  Do  not  be  sat- 
isfied with  saying  so.  Show  it,  wherever  you  go. 
Show  what  a  woman  of  liberal  education  is  by 
the  eagerness  with  which  you  pursue  that  educa- 
tion. Any  woman  of  you  can  secure,  and  ought, 
two  hours  a  day  for  generous  reading  and  study. 
And  no  man  or  woman  needs  more  to  keep  up 
bravely  and  well  the  line  of  education  which  he 
has  selected  for  his  own.  Make  it  your  duty, 
then,  to  carry,  wherever  you  go — be  it  to  the 
ranch,  be  it  to  the  mill  town,  be  it  to  the  busy 
city — the  thoroughness,  even  the  elegancies,  of 
this  college.  Why,  Bernard  civilized  western 
Europe  by  sending  out  from  Clairvaux  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  swarms  of  educated  men,  who 
made  two  hundred  and  fifty  other  centres  of 
faith  and  of  knowledge  in  countries  then  bar- 
barous. More  than  this  is  in  the  power,  nay, 
more  than  this  is  to  be  the  future,  of  Smith 
College  in  the  next  thirty  years. 

Thus,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  one  of  you  to 
level  up  from  the  first  moment  the  public  edu- 
[271  ] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


cation  of  the  place  where  you  shall  live.  The 
village  school,  the  high  school,  the  county  acad- 
emy or  college,  the  public  library,  these  live  and 
grow,  or  starve  and  die,  according  as  you  deter- 
mine— you  and  those  others  who  have  received 
what  you  have  received  from  the  lavish  love  of 
the  State  and  of  the  nation.  We  have  all  seen 
what  we  call  ideal  communities,  where  effort  in 
this  line  has  been  crowned.  One  comes  to  a 
village  of  Friends,  sometimes — of  the  people 
called  Quakers — where  there  was  never  a  pauper, 
where  every  child  receives  what  we  call  a  high 
school  education,  where  to  every  family  the  pub- 
lic library  supplies  the  last  and  best  in  literature. 
And  this  is  possible  everywhere.  One  need  not 
be  on  the  board  of  supervisors  to  do  it.  I  met, 
the  other  day,  a  learned  judge,  who  told  me  that 
for  more  than  twenty  years  he  had  met  every 
winter,  in  his  own  library,  once  a  week,  a  club 
of  his  neighbors — men  and  women — who  came, 
and  came  gladly,  that  he  might  guide  them  in 
the  study  of  history.  "And  all  those  people," 
said  he,  laughing,  "there  are  three  or  four  hun- 
dred of  them  now  scattered  over  the  world;  they 
all  know  what  to  read,  and  how  to  read  it." 
You  see  that  village  is  another  place  because  that 
one  man  lived  there.  Yet  there  is  only  one  man 
who  chose  to  make  himself  so  far  an  apostle  to 
[272] 


APPENDIX 


carry  forward  the  light  which  his  Alma  Mater 
had  kindled. 

Or  consider  for  a  moment  how  the  great 
national  pulpit  might  be  improved,  that  pulpit 
to  which  ten  men  listen  for  one  who  sits  in 
church  or  chapel  on  Sunday.  I  mean  the  daily 
and  weekly  press  of  the  land.  If  every  man 
and  woman  of  liberal  culture,  in  any  humblest 
village  of  the  land,  saw  it  was  their  part  and 
privilege  to  hold  up  the  hands  of  the  spirited 
printer  who  has  carried  into  the  wilderness  a 
few  pounds  of  type,  who  prints  the  legal  notices 
and  advertisements  of  the  country  stores.  What 
folly  to  hold  back  from  him  and  ridicule  him! 
What  a  chance,  if  you  will  only  make  friends 
with  him  and  help  him!  He  does  not  want  to 
make  a  bad  newspaper.  He  wants  it  to  be  as 
good  as  the  London  Spectator.  What  gradu- 
ate does  not  want  the  same  thing !  What  might 
not  the  local  press  be,  if  the  educated  people  of 
this  country  came  loyally  and  regularly  to  the 
duty  and  privilege,  I  do  not  say  of  making  it 
the  mouthpiece  of  their  convenience,  but  the 
educator  and  enlivener  of  the  community  in 
which  they  live !  Do  not  let  such  a  prophet  be 
undeserving  of  honor  in  his  own  home. 

Such  victories  are  possible  to  him  or  her  who 
accepts  the  great  alliance,  who  in  the  phrase  of 

[273] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


Paul,  the  omnipotent  sage,  is  willing  to  be  a  fel- 
low workman  together  with  God.  That  man, 
that  woman,  in  accepting  the  universe,  takes  infi- 
nite power  as  an  ally.  For  this,  this  apostle  of 
the  highest  manhood  and  womanhood  keeps 
himself  pure.  The  wisdom  that  is  from  above 
is  first  pure.  And  it  is  the  pure  in  heart  who 
see  God,  and  they  only.  Character  is  the  foun- 
dation stone  on  which  this  City  of  God  is  to  be 
built;  and  you  build  as  of  straw  and  stubble  if 
that  foundation  is  not  first  laid ! 

You  spring  from  men  whose  hearts  and  lives  were  pure, 
Their  eye  was  single,  and  their  walk  was  sure. 
See  that  their  children's  children  in  their  day 
May  bless  such  fathers'  fathers  when  they  pray. 

"Who  is  sufficient  for  these  things?"  Does 
any  one  ask  that  question  in  a  certain  tone  of 
despair?  Here  is  the  answer.  Every  child  of 
God  is  sufficient  for  them,  because  she  shares 
her  Father's  almightiness.  Every  daughter  of 
the  King  is  sufficient  for  them.  For  such  a 
woman  is  the  infinite  child  of  an  infinite  God. 
It  is  in  His  love  in  which  she  loves.  It  is  with 
His  strength  that  she  moves.  It  is  His  life  in 
which  she  lives.  And  she  uses  this  consecrated 
life,  not  for  herself,  but  for  all  whom  she  sees 
or  hears ;  for  all  who  see  her  or  hear  her.  Fellow 

[274] 


APPENDIX 


workmen,  as  St.  Paul  says  so  well,  together  with 
God. 

For  this  does  America  train  the  women  of 
America  as  well  as  she  knows  how.  If  her 
soldiers  go  to  war,  the  women  of  America  do 
their  part  in  relieving  the  sufferings  of  armies 
and  bringing  in  the  reign  of  peace.  America 
receives  every  year  at  her  seaports  half  a  million 
of  the  starving  and  naked  of  every  race,  every 
country  and  every  faith.  The  women  of  Amer- 
ica have  more  to  do  than  the  men  in  welcoming 
those  exiles.  How  often  it  falls  to  them  to  feed 
the  hungry,  to  clothe  the  naked,  to  bring  good 
tidings  to  those  who  are  cast  down — more  than 
any  others,  to  teach  the  ignorant  and  to  give  life 
to  the  dying!  No  one  who  is  not  a  stark  fool 
speaks  of  a  woman's  education  as  finished.  No ! 
Every  day  is  a  new  Commencement  Day,  as  such 
women  forget  the  things  that  are  behind — as 
they  stretch  forward  to  the  things  that  are 
before. 

Each  hand  is  trained  every  day  to  more  deft 
handiwork.  Each  eye  is  trained  each  day  to 
keener  distinction  of  color,  each  day  the  memory 
is  schooled  to  more  accurate  recollection.  The 
reason  is  trained  to  judgment  of  truth  more  sure. 
The  body  is  controlled  and  the  mind  by  the 
living  child  of  a  loving  Father. 

[275  1 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


She  lives  and  moves  and  has  her  being  in  her 
God. 

There  needs  but  one  caution  for  an  enterprise 
so  grand.  It  is  a  caution  for  the  handling  of 
this  mind,  of  whose  achievements  we  are  so  proud, 
as  we  should  be.  Even  the  mind,  queen-like  and 
imperial,  is  beneath  your  own  control,  if  you 
choose  early  to  assert  that  control.  It  shall  not 
think  of  mean  things  or  bad  things  unless  you 
permit  it.  You  are  its  mistress !  No !  And 
for  this  control,  the  first  direction  is  that  of  the 
practical  and  sensible,  but  always  enthusiastic 
St.  Paul:  "Let  no  one  think  of  himself,"  and 
Paul  adds  with  a  certain  humor  which  never 
leaves  him  long,  "more  highly  than  he  ought  to 
think."  Here  is  a  condition  which  to  most  of 
us  leaves  the  range  of  thinking  which  is  per- 
mitted on  a  plane  ludicrously  low. 

Of  which  disease  the  remedy  also  is  offered 
by  the  same  physician:  "Let  a  man  think  sober- 
ly," he  says;  and  in  another  place,  "Whatsoever 
things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  true, 
whatsoever  things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things 
are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are  of  good  re- 
port, if  there  be  any  virtue  or  if  there  be  any 
praise,  think  on  these  things."  Now  this  in- 
struction is  practical;  not  meant  for  rhetoric  or 
poetry,  but  as  a  direction  for  an  intelligent  man 
[276] 


f 

APPENDIX 


to  pursue  in  the  conduct  of  life.  You  can  keep 
impure  thoughts  out  of  your  mind  by  thinking 
of  that  which  is  pure.  You  can  keep  yourself 
out  of  your  mind  by  thinking  of  other  people. 
And,  to  train  the  mind  in  generous  and  large 
thought,  so  that  it  may  not  fall  back  to  mean 
thought  and  small,  is  the  most  important  duty 
you  have  in  this  part  of  life,  which  has  to  do 
with  making  ready  your  weapons. 

The  creation  of  such  character  is  the  object 
and  result  of  all  true  education,  of  all  bodily 
training,  of  all  mental  discipline,  of  all  spiritual 
exercises.  Or,  to  say  all  in  one  word,  it  bids 
you  offer  yourselves  wholly,  body,  soul,  and 
mind,  to  your  GOD. 

Does  this  seem  a  pulpit  phrase — next  to  noth- 
ing because  ecclesiastical?  It  means  this:  Do 
not  separate  your  religion  from  the  rest  of  life, 
but  soak  your  life  in  your  religion,  and  your 
religion  in  your  life.  You  ought  not  to  be  able 
to  separate  the  two.  You  are  not  God's  child 
on  Sunday  and  a  child  of  the  world  on  Monday. 
You  are  God's  child  all  the  time.  It  is  not 
God's  law  which  you  obey  when  you  eat  the 
bread  of  communion,  and  the  world's  law  which 
you  obey  when  you  give  your  order  to  the  baker. 
It  is  all  God's  law;  and  you  can  make  the  one 
duty  as  sacred  as  the  other.  You  can  sit  at  the 

[277] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


piano  and  practise  your  scales  humbly,  patiently, 
and  with  the  same  steady  determination  with 
which  an  archangel  goes  about  his  duty.  You 
can  do  it  to  the  glory  of  God.  God  is  pleased 
when  you  make  the  endeavor.  You  can  take 
your  baby  brother  to  ride.  You  can  lift  his 
carriage  gently  over  the  curbstone,  you  can  meet 
the  perplexities  of  that  care  as  truly  as  Uriel 
met  his  perplexities  when  he  stood  before  the 
sun  to  keep  watch  and  ward.  The  charge  may 
be  as  true,  as  pure,  and  as  grand. 

To  make  this  world  a  temple,  as  we  make 
life  a  joy — this  is  the  effort  for  you  and  me.  To 
glorify  common  care,  that  daily  duty  may  be 
divine — this  is  the  beginning,  the  middle,  and 
the  end. 

OLD-AGE  PENSIONS. 

WHEN  I  was  a  boy,  there  was  a  very 
edifying    and    entertaining   book, 
called    "The    Book   of   Trades." 
Mine  had  a  red  morocco  cover, 
but  for  us  boys  its  value  was  much  more  in  the 
inside  than  in  the  color  of  the  outside. 

The  book  really  told  you  how  hatters  made 
hats,  how  shoemakers  made  shoes,  how  printers 
set  type  and  printed  books,  and  went  into  similar 

[278] 


details  for  all  the  callings  of  men.  And  if  you 
read  a  story-book,  the  "virtuous  Frank"  or  the 
"good  Harry"  went  into  a  real  blacksmith  shop 
and  saw  a  real  blacksmith  make  a  real  horseshoe 
and  nail  it  upon  the  hoof  of  a  real  horse. 

Such  were  the  methods  of  a  hundred  years 
ago.  They  were  the  methods  in  England, 
whose  modest  hack  writers  wrote  the  children's 
books  of  that  day;  and  they  were  the  methods 
of  America,  which  imported  those  children's 
books.  For  in  those  days  the  American  boy 
knew  about  bullfinches  and  robin  redbreasts,  and 
nobody  taught  him  that  there  were  such  realities 
as  mocking-birds  and  orioles. 

All  this  is  changed.  A  man  who  made  mil- 
lions by  his  mechanical  inventions,  a  man  whose 
inventions  have  changed  the  daily  life  of  every 
American,  told  me  that  he  had  asked  fifty  boys 
what  handiwork  they  would  prefer;  and  that,  in 
every  instance,  the  boy  replied  that  he  would  like 
to  be  a  plumber.  The  curious  truth  was  that 
plumbing  was  the  only  mechanical  art  which 
these  boys,  trained  in  our  modern  life,  had  seen 
in  practice.  The  average  boy  of  to-day  cannot 
go  into  a  blacksmith  shop,  he  cannot  go  into  a 
carpenter  shop,  he  cannot  see  a  printer  at  his 
work;  we  do  such  things  in  another  fashion  now. 
We  do  them  on  a  scale  quite  too  large  to  admit 

[279] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


of  "virtuous  Harrys"  or  "thoughtful  Franks" 
walking  in  and  conversing  with  the  "operative." 
And  with  the  movements  which  change  a  work- 
man into  an  "operative"  many  other  changes 
follow. 

What  I  want  to  talk  about  is  the  condition  of 
the  workman  now,  as  he  advances  in  years.  The 
hatter  in  the  picture,  or  the  "joiner"  in  the  pic- 
ture, or  even  the  weaver,  was  of  more  or  less 
use  in  the  last  years  of  his  life.  He  need  not 
stand  so  many  hours  a  day  in  making  his  hats, 
or  he  need  not  weave  so  many  hours,  or  he  could 
still  make  a  hat  or  two,  or  weave  a  yard  or  two. 
But  now  that  the  artisan  works  with  great  ma- 
chines, his  hatting,  shoeing,  or  weaving  is  the 
product  of  machinery,  worked  by  steam-engines 
or  by  waterfalls  much  more  than  it  is  a 
product  of  human  hands.  The  men  who  con- 
tribute perhaps  a  tenth  part  toward  manufacture 
are,  as  they  grow  old,  in  a  wholly  different  con- 
dition from  that  of  a  century  ago.  As  the  old 
phrase  was,  they  must  run  with  the  machines. 
If  they  are  in  a  State  where  machinery  runs 
eleven  hours,  they  must  work  eleven  hours.  If 
they  cannot  work  eleven  hours,  they  cannot  work 
at  all. 

Just  this  same  change  asserts  itself  in  almost 
all  other  life.  The  average  man,  in  New  York, 
[280] 


APPENDIX 


in  Philadelphia,  or  in  Chicago,  is  a  thousand 
times  as  strong  as  the  average  man  of  a  century 
ago.  By  which  I  mean  that  he  uses  a  thousand 
times  as  much  physical  power.  But  he  does 
this  on  the  condition  that  he  shall  keep  up  with 
the  machine.  Your  commission  house  is  no 
longer  a  dainty  establishment  in  which  you  pack 
nephews  and  young  cousins  from  the  country  in 
convenient  clerkships  where  they  shall  lounge 
away  a  few  hours  and  draw  a  good  salary.  Your 
commission  house,  like  your  hatter,  has  to  run 
with  the  machine.  You  must  have  men  who  are 
fresh  and  well  and  alert,  and  they  must  do  a 
good  day's  work  or  you  do  not  want  them  at  all. 
This  is  a  long  preface.  But  it  answers  its 
purpose  if  it  makes  the  reader  reflect  that  there 
is  now  no  place  in  our  working  order  for  old 
men — that  is  to  say,  for  men  who  have  passed 
what  used  to  be  called  the  "grand  climacteric." 
What  happens  now  is  that  when  the  great  firm 
of  Spinner  &  Dresser  dissolves,  after  a  pros- 
perous career  for  half  a  century  in  New  York, 
when  Mr.  Spinner  has  died  and  left  ten  millions 
to  his  wife,  and  Mr.  Dresser  has  gone  up  to  the 
Second  Cataract  in  his  private  yacht  with  his 
family,  that  nice  Mr.  Workman,  who  has  been 
in  the  office  as  cashier  so  long,  receives  a  hand- 
some present  of  half  a  year's  salary  in  advance. 
[281] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


He  has  a  silver  pitcher  given  him  by  the  firm, 
and  when  he  is  sixty-five  years  of  age  he  finds 
that  there  is  nothing  for  him  to  do.  Nobody 
chooses  to  employ  an  old  man  of  sixty-five. 

Exactly  the  same  thing  happens  to  Tom  Soley 
when,  at  sixty-five,  he  finds  that  he  cannot  go 
down  to  the  shoe-shop  before  daylight,  work 
there  ten  or  eleven  hours,  according  as  he  hap- 
pens to  live  in  Massachusetts  or  Rhode  Island, 
and  go  back  up  the  hill  to  his  house.  Nobody 
wants  to  employ  him,  and  nobody  will  employ 
him,  unless  he  can  keep  up  with  the  machine. 

They  caught  hold  of  this  truth  in  England 
before  we  did  in  America.  The  agitation  for 
the  pension  of  old  men  in  England  began  with 
some  papers  by  a  Rev.  Mr.  Wilkinson,  which 
were  printed  as  early  as  1892.  The  best  thing 
that  can  be  said  of  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  is 
that  he,  who  was  brought  up  in  a  manufacturing 
town,  caught  hold  early  of  the  idea  of  old-age 
pensions,  and  that  he  has  followed  it  up  bravely 
in  all  chances  and  changes  since.  In  England, 
when  such  a  thing  is  proposed,  they  have  the 
difficulty,  which  we  do  not  have,  of  arranging 
between  the  submerged  tenth  and  the  bottom  of 
the  lower  class,  and  the  middle  of  the  lower  class, 
and  the  upper  lower  class.  Then  they  have  to 
consider  the  lower  middle  class,  which  is  differ- 
[282] 


APPENDIX 


ent  from  the  middle  lower  class,  and  the  middle 
middle  class,  and  the  upper  middle  class.  And 
then  they  have  to  arrange  for  the  lower  upper 
class,  and  the  middle  upper  class,  and  the  really 
upper  class,  and  then  for  the  uppest  class.  Poor 
Mr.  Chamberlain  and  his  friends  are  still  mud- 
dling around  in  the  various  complications  which 
follow  on  such  a  system,  if  system  it  may  be 
called.  All  the  same,  four  times  a  year,  the 
magic  words,  Old-Age  Pensions,  get  spoken  in 
one  or  other  report  or  review,  and  England  goes 
forward,  though  not  very  rapidly. 

Meanwhile,  in  New  Zealand  they  belled  the 
cat,  and  are  living  under  a  statute  which  provides 
a  stated  pension  for  men  and  women  over  sixty- 
five  years  of  age. 

The  adjustment  of  the  old-age  pensions  would 
be  much  easier  in  the  United  States  than  it  is  in 
England,  and  whoever  takes  it  up  seriously  here 
will  find  that  it  is  received  by  our  legislators 
with  much  more  cordiality  than  it  is  received  by 
the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain.  In  England, 
in  their  various  trade  organizations,  they  are  not 
unused  to  plans  for  benefits  to  be  received  at  cer- 
tain fixed  periods  in  the  future.  The  admirable 
arrangement  of  benefit  societies  in  this  country 
has  instructed  our  people  in  similar  plans.  And 
the  occasional  failures  of  benefit  societies  here 

[283] 


THE  PEOPLE" 


have,  in  a  harder  way,  given  instruction  in  the 
matter  which  is  of  value. 

Stated  very  briefly,  the  difficulty  in  every  ben- 
efit society  is  this :  You  make  a  thousand  bright 
and  successful  young  fellows  agree  to  form  a 
benefit  society.  If  any  one  of  the  thousand  dies, 
the  other  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  will  sub- 
scribe each  a  dollar  apiece  for  his  widow.  When 
a  man  falls  off  the  top  of  a  cupola  and  lies  on 
the  sidewalk  seventy  feet  below,  every  one  of 
the  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  are  glad  that 
it  was  not  he,  and  will  pay  up  the  dollar  they 
have  promised.  While  they  are  all  compara- 
tively young,  each  man  pays  up  willingly  enough. 
But  it  is  when  they  begin  to  grow  old,  when  one 
and  another  casualty  follows  on  with  that  very 
determined  law  which  has  surrounded  death  since 
Horace's  time,  that  it  appears  difficult  to  keep  up 
the  number  of  the  society.  Every  device  has  to 
be  considered  to  attempt  to  persuade  people  to 
join  with  as  much  alacrity  where  half  the  mem- 
bers are  more  than  fifty.  Some  benefit  societies 
are  so  craftily  managed  that  this  difficulty  is  met. 
Some  of  them  are  so  badly  managed  that  the 
whole  thing  goes  into  insolvency,  and  many  a 
poor  fellow  who  has  paid  his  scot  gallantly  for 
ten  years  finds  he  has  earned  nothing  from  it. 
Now,  every  one  of  these  failures  simply  shows 

[284] 


APPENDIX 


what  happens  to  people  who  have  been  seduced 
by  the  devil. 

The  devil  has  offered  to  give  them  something 
for  nothing,  and  this  is  an  offer  which  he  will 
not  make  good.  The  time  comes  when  there  is 
nothing  in  the  treasury,  because  nothing  has  been 
put  into  meet  that  particular  exigency.  In  case 
of  life-insurance  on  any  of  the  selfish  lines,  this 
central  truth  of  the  universe  asserts  itself  with 
painful  significance.  When  the  person  who 
wishes  to  insure  himself  goes  to  the  medical  ex- 
aminer, he  finds  that  there  are  fourteen  bacteria 
in  him  where  there  should  be  none,  and  the  medi- 
cal examiner  declines  to  give  him  a  policy.  It 
is  only  his  brother  or  his  cousin,  who  has  no 
bacteria  in  that  particular  spot,  who  passes  the 
examination.  That  is  to  say,  according  to  the 
present  theory,  it  is  only  the  people  who  won't 
die  who  are  insured  against  sickness  or  against 
disease.  All  the  other  applicants,  from  fair  to 
middling  and  from  middling  to  quarter  mid- 
ling,  are  cast  out.  The  community  at  large  does 
not  pay  much  attention  to  this.  The  workers 
who  are  the  agents  of  the  life-insurance  compa- 
nies do  not  bring  it  forward  in  their  speculations; 
but  it  vitiates  the  whole  business,  and  there  is  a 
certain  sensitive  feeling  at  the  bottom  of  a  well- 
regulated  mind  which  gives  warning  that  there 

[*«s] 


"WE,  THE  PEOPLE" 


is  something  in  the  business  which  does  not  quite 
bear  investigation.  The  truth  is,  you  are  play- 
ing your  cards  in  the  hope  that  you  shall  deceive 
death,  and  the  insurance  people  are  acting  as  the 
croupier. 

Any  one  who  thinks  on  the  matter,  however, 
sees  that  if  he  would  accept  the  universe,  and 
make  a  fair  calculation  as  to  what  are  the  chances 
for  every  person — man  or  woman,  rich  or  poor, 
upper  middle  class  or  lower  middle  class — he 
would  avoid  these  difficulties.  We  shall  avoid 
them  if,  in  our  system  of  old-age  pensions,  we 
shall  provide  bravely  for  every  person  who  has 
been  born  into  the  world  and  who  has  lived  to 
a  period  where  we  find,  on  the  whole,  that  a 
man  can  no  longer  run  with  the  machine.  Mr. 
Wilkinson  and  Mr.  Chamberlain  and  the  rest 
who  have  written  on  the  subject  select  different 
ages  for  this  period.  The  law  of  those  Austral- 
ian colonies  that  have  introduced  general  old- 
age  insurance  fixes  the  time  at  sixty-five.  What 
the  old  writers  called  the  grand  climacteric  was 
sixty-three  years.  A  "climacteric,"  or  step  in 
the  human  ladder,  was  supposed  to  come  in  every 
seventh  year.  Thus,  a  man  is  of  age  at  the  end 
of  his  third  climacteric;  and  the  grand  climacteric 
marks  the  end  of  the  ninth.  According  to  some 
of  us,  it  is  the  prime  of  life. 
[286] 


APPENDIX 


Now,  in  America,  we  are  used  to  equality. 
We  cannot  be  drawing  these  delicate  lines  be- 
tween the  lower  middle  class  and  the  upper  mid- 
dle class  which  Mr.  Chamberlain  and  the  rest 
of  the  English  writers  delight  in.  To  our  simple 
political  economy,  all  men  are  sons  of  God  and 
all  women  are  daughters  of  God.  They  are  all 
born  in  the  same  family,  and  the  simplest  way 
in  which  the  family  can  arrange  is  to  take  care 
of  all  of  them  in  the  same  method.  So  we  give 
to  all  of  them  pure  water,  we  give  to  all  of  them 
the  right  to  walk  on  the  street.  We  illumine 
the  lighthouses  for  all  of  them.  We  keep  the 
public  schools  for  all  of  them.  Before  the  law 
all  of  them  are  equal.  We  do  not  contradict 
this  system  of  equality  if  we  say  that  a  man  of 
sixty-nine  years  of  age  shall  receive  no  pension, 
but  a  man  of  seventy  shall.  Our  law  cannot  take 
care  of  trifles,  and  we  must  fix,  on  the  whole, 
our  average  at  the  point  which  human  experience 
has  settled  upon  as  an  average.  It  would 
not  then  be  difficult  in  America  to  provide  a 
modest  life-pension  for  every  man  and  every 
woman  who  belongs  in  a  given  community,  who 
is  past  the  line,  if  you  please,  of  seventy  years 
or  sixty-eight,  or  sixty-five,  or  of  seventy-five,  as 
that  community  chooses  to  fix  it.  In  practice,  it 
will  probably  be  better  to  fix  the  line  quite  high 

[287] 


,  THE  PEOPLE" 


at  the  beginning,  and  let  it  come  lower  and  lower, 
according  as  the  public  is  trained  to  see  how  easy 
the  working  of  the  system  is. 

I  am  writing  in  Massachusetts,  where  the  con- 
struction of  a  system  of  pensions  is  easier,  be- 
cause we  maintain  our  old-fashioned  system  of 
poll-tax,  without  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the 
true  manhood  of  the  voter  cannot  be  maintained 
in  any  community.  We  make  every  man  who  is 
more  than  eighteen  years  of  age  put  two  dollars 
a  year  into  the  treasury  of  the  State.  Thus,  in 
the  last  year,  1902,  every  male  citizen  was  made 
to  pay  this  sum  for  the  services  of  the  town  or 
of  the  State.  This  tax  was  apart  from  what  he 
paid  into  the  excise  on  his  liquor  and  spirits,  and 
on  his  share  of  the  national  tariff. 

By  a  curious  obliquity,  the  women  begged  off 
from  the  poll-tax  which  they  formerly  paid. 
This  was  their  way  of  saying  that  they  did  not 
want  to  receive  any  benefits  from  the  State.  All 
the  same,  the  old  women  would  have  stood  a 
better  chance  of  receiving  life-pensions  if  they 
had  paid  two  dollars  apiece  into  the  treasury 
since  they  were  eighteen  years  old. 

Under  this  healthy  interpretation  of  "equal- 
ity," the  native  male  citizens  of  Massachusetts 
paid  into  her  town  treasuries  in  1902  more  than 
two  million  dollars.  The  payment  for  ten  years 
[288] 


APPENDIX 


only  would  give  us  two  hundred  thousand  pen- 
sions of  one  hundred  dollars  each.  But  if  we 
paid  a  hundred  dollars  to  every  citizen,  man  and 
woman,  over  sixty-nine  years  of  age,  we  should 
only  have  to  pay  about  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars.  Each  one  of  them  would 
feel  that  he  had  been  insuring  himself  in  old  age 
by  his  payments  to  the  commonwealth.  No  one 
of  them  would  feel  that  he  was  a  beggar  or  a 
pauper.  And  so  soon  as  we  shall  begin  upon 
such  an  arrangement,  so  soon  will  tax-dodging 
on  the  part  of  poll-tax  people  come  to  an  end. 
There  is  not  a  young  man  or  an  old  man — a 
hobbledehoy  or  a  hobbledehoy's  father — who 
would  not  gladly  pay  his  scot,  year  by  year,  when 
he  saw  the  cheer  and  comfort  which  such  a  pay- 
ment gives,  perhaps  to  a  father  or  mother,  per- 
haps to  a  grandfather  or  grandmother.  And 
I  do  not  think  even  the  fairer  or  weaker  sex 
need  decline  the  one  hundred  dollars  which  will 
be  paid  to  each  of  them.  As  was  intimated 
above,  their  case  would  be  a  little  stronger  in  the 
forum  of  justice  if  they  had  paid  any  poll-tax. 
As  it  is,  the  poll-tax  fund  paid  by  the  man  is 
sufficient  for  every  payment,  and  we  may  well 
charge  it  to  the  same  account  to  which  we  charge 
ostrich-feathers  and  pancake-hats,  which  we  see 
daily  in  the  street-cars,  which  we  know  were  paid 

[289] 


'WE,  THE  PEOPLE' 


for  by  the  willing  work  of  husbands,  or  sons,  or 
lovers. 

Simply  speaking,  the  payment  of  an  old-age 
pension — say  of  a  hundred  dollars  each  to  every 
citizen,  male  or  female,  who  has  passed  the  age 
of  seventy — does  not  involve  a  heavy  burden  to 
the  State.  For  where  the  State  has  been  col- 
lecting poll-taxes,  it  has  received  from  such  taxes 
far  more  than  the  pension  proposed  would  re- 
quire. 

Let  us  now  consider  for  a  moment  the  advan- 
tages which  the  State,  as  an  organization,  would 
receive  from  such  a  system.  As  matters  stand, 
the  managers  of  asylums,  whether  for  the  poor, 
or  perhaps  for  the  blind,  or  the  insane,  or  other 
invalids,  are  always  at  their  wits'  ends  to  know 
what  they  shall  do  with  the  aged  people  who  are 
crowded  upon  them.  The  almshouses  of  towns 
and  counties  are  filled  in  the  same  way. 

Now,  all  these  old  people  are  better  cared  for 
in  the  homes  of  old  neighbors,  or  old  friends, 
very  possibly  of  sons,  or  of  daughters,  who  would 
receive  them  and  take  charge  of  them  humanely 
if  they  could  receive  a  little  ready  money  for  the 
extra  expense.  As  society  organizes  itself,  a 
very  little  money  goes  a  great  way  in  the  average 
household  of  an  American.  The  moment  that 
it  appears  that  a  grandfather  or  a  grandmother 
[290] 


APPENDIX 


has  one  hundred  dollars  a  year  to  his  good,  that 
moment  we  shall  find  that  the  burden  thrown 
upon  the  State  and  town  in  their  asylums  is  re- 
duced by  a  larger  proportion  than  by  the  charge 
made  by  the  pensions  upon  the  treasury.  Thus 
the  pension  system  has  the  great  advantage  that 
it  maintains  life  in  homes,  and  that  it  abates  the 
necessity  for  great  institutions  or  asylums.  With 
the  somewhat  stumbling  precedent  which  is  given 
in  the  management  of  the  great  benefit  societies, 
it  seems  to  me  sure  that  the  Australian  system  of 
State  pensions  will  work  its  way  into  the  more 
intelligent  States  first,  and  gradually  into  the 
States  which  do  not  affect  civilization. 


THE   END 


[291  ] 


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